VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 


~ ASSOCIATION — 
of the 
MIDDLE WEST 


THE LIBRARY OF THE 
FEB 10 1940 


UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 


JANUARY 18, 19 and 20, 1917 
peePipeUM HOTEL — 
Chicago — Ny 


ARTICLE I] 
Objects 


The objects of this Association shall be to study 
problems relating to vocational education and to 
bring the results of this study to public attention 
for the purpose of fostering types of education that 
will meet the vocational needs of youth and the 
reasonable demands of industry for efficient work- 
ers while preserving those elements of general edu- 
cation necessary for good citizenship in a democ- 
racy. 


The addresses and discussion of this Convention were reported by 
the Master Reporting Association on Stenotype Shorthand Machines 


Fc 


\ 


CONTENTS 


Officers and Directors for Year 1916 
Officers and Directors for Year 1917 


Program for Year 1916  — x 


The Significance of the Smith-Hughes Bill 2 
-_- DR. DAVID SNEDDEN 
Some Needed Developments in Vocational Education 
WILLIAM T. BAWDEN 
Elementary Education as the Basis of Industrial 
Efficiency Hf « £ a 
FREDERICK W. ROMAN 
is Vocational Education a Menace to Democracy ? 
DR. DAVID SNEDDEN 
Democracy and Industrial Education & z 
WM. B. OWEN 
The Double Problem of Vocational Education for 
Women x td " 2 i is 
DR. DAVID SNEDDEN 
Efficiency in the Home “ i a . is 
ABBEY MARLATT 
Work For Women . J ef a s se 
MISS ISABELLE BEVIER 
First Steps in Agriculture a : i sd 
BERT BALL 
To What Extent Can The Schools Provide 
Agricultural Education ? 3 se s f 
MATTHEW P. ADAMS 
The Farm Paper as a Factor in the Education of the 
Farmer . 2 a A . be 
FRANK B. WHITE 


_— _ 


Rural Education in Cook County fe J 


EDWIN T. TOBIN 


Organized Labor’s Position on Vocational Education 
MATTHEW WOLL 


on | 


17 


23 


34 


44 


51 


66 


15 


78 


80 


90 


95 


ug 


Trade Agreements ~ — Panes : bs ri i 1138 
CHARLES A. PROSSER 


A Discussion i i S f. Ss a @ u 127 
P. R. BELL 
The Banquet i io - i ‘ a Bi 129 
WILLIAM J. BOGAN, Toastmaster 
Address of Welcome iu id 2 9 id i 131 


| JOHN D. SHOOP 
Principles That Should Govern in the Framing 
of Vocational Laws a by a 4 i 136 
CHARLES A. PROSSER 
Women in Industry % a _ Z ot i 147 
ABBEY MARLATT 
The Outlook For Vocational Education 
Legislation in Illinois d Ny h a y 150 
DAVID SHANAHAN 
The Relation of Boys’ and Girls’ Club Work 
To Vocational Education _ a i it y 153 
O. H. BENSON 


Boys’ and Girls’ Club Work—What Is It? 


—Common Sense a " ts 2 » 4 156 
| O. H. BENSON 
Commercial Education of Bath Meche a u 157 
LEV ERIE ey Ok 
Training Teachers For Vocational Schools i 2 169 
L. D. HARVEY as 
Farm Life As Education sh i wy s 178 


HERBERT QUICK 
How Can Vocational Efficiency Be Obtained in the 
Public Schools — a i: b ! a i 184 
WM. C. BAGLEY 
A Discussion 4 . PA BaD iS r & 2 *: 191 
WM. BACHRACH 


OFFICERS OF THE ASSOCIATION 


President—George H. Miller, Welfare Manager Sears Roebuck & Co. 
Bie rena atl C. Stetson, Principal South High School, Grand 
apids 
Secretary—Albert G. Bauersfeld, Instructor Pattern Making Depart- 
ment, Lane Technical School 
Treasurer—Clara H. Smith, Manager L. C. Smith Typewriter Company 


BOARD OF DIRECTORS 


William Bachrach, Supervisor of Commercial Work in the High Schools 
of Chicago 

William J. Bartholf, Principal Crane Technical School 

Charles A. Bennett, Editor Manual Training and Vocational Education 
Magazine 

William J. Bogan, Principal Lane Technical School 

G. I. Christie, Superintendent Department Agriculture Extension, Pur- 
due University, Indiana 

Flora J. Cooke, Principal Francis W. Parker School, Chicago 

Paul W. Covert, Director of the Shop Departments Indianapolis Manual 
Training High School 

Richard L. Crampton, Secretary Illinois Bankers’ Association 

_ Albert W. Evans, Principal Farragut School, Chicago 

Henry N. Greenebaum, Secretary, Joseph N. Eisendrath Glove Company | 

Helen N. Hefferan, Vice-President National Education Association 

Wilson H. Piender soit. Assistant Professor Industrial Education, Univer- 
sity of Wisconsin, Milwaukee 

Francis Kilduff, Ex-President Illinois Retail Dry Goods Association, La 
Salle, Illinois 

Sidney Mandl, Dry Goods Merchant 

Frank L,.» Morse, Principal Carter Harrison. Technical School, Chicago 

Agnes Nestor, President Women’s Trade Union League 

Victor Olander, Secretary-Treasurer Illinois State Federation of Labor 

William B. Owen, Principal Chicago Normal College 3 

Charles A. Prosser, Director Dunwoody Institute, Minneapolis 

William M. Roberts, District Superintendent in charge of Vocational 
Schools, Chicago 

William E. Rummel, Agricultural Extension Department International 
Harvester Company 

John O. Steendahl, Director Continuation School, Stout Institute, Me- 
nomonie, Wisconsin 

John H. Stube, President Principal’s Club, Chicago 

Samuel.J. Vaughn, Head, Department of Manual Arts, Northern Illinois 
State Normal School 

Dora Wells, Principal Lucy Flower Technical High School for Girls 

George Landis Wilson, Efficiency Engineer, Chicago 

Edward F. Worst, Supervisor of Elementary Manual Training, Chicago 

Ernest A. Wreidt, Statistician, City Club, Chicago 


OFFICERS OF THE ASSOCIATION ELECTED FOR 1917-1918 


President—Samuel J. Vaughn, Head, Department of Manual Arts, 
Northern Illinois State Normal School 

Vice-President—Albert G. Bauersfeld, Instructor Pattern Making De- 
partment, Lane Technical School 

Secretary—Leonard W. Wahlstrom, Director, Department of Industrial 
Arts, Francis W. Parker School 

Treasurer—Clara H. Smith, Director, The Employer’s Co-operative 
School, Chicago 


. BOARD OF DIRECTORS 

EN P. Adams, Superintendent, Mooseheart School, Moosehaert, 
Illinois 

Wililam Bachrach, Supervisor of Commercial Work in the High Schools 
of Chicago 

William J. Bartholf, Principal Crane Technical School 

Charles A. Bennett, Editor Manual Training and Vocational Education 
Magazine 

William J. Bogan, Principal Lane Technical School 

Mary D. Bradford, Superintendent of Schools, Kenosha, Wisconsin 

Frank Bruce, Publisher, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 

G. 1. Christie, Superintendent Department Agricultural Extension, Pur- 
due University, LaFayette, Indiana 

John A. Bushnell, Secretary Chicago Journeymen Plumbers’ Protective 
and Benevolent Association 

Ernest E. Cole, District Superintendent of Schools, Ohiraes 

J. W. Dietz, Maaeer Educational Department, Western Electric Co. 

Albert W. Evans, Principal Farragut School, Chicago 

Henry N. Greenebaum, Secretary, Joseph N. Eisendrath Glove Company 
Chicago 

Helen N. Heffran, Chairman Education Committee, Chicago Womans 
City Club 

Maj. Wilson H. Henderson, Sanitary Corps, Surgeon General’s Office, 
Washington, D.C. 

Francis Kilduff, Ex-President National Retail Dry Goods Association, 
LaSalle, Illinots 

Abbey Marlatt, Professor Household Economics, University of Wis- 
consin, Madison, Wisconsin 

C. Marshall, Dean, School of Commerce and Administration, University 

of Chicago 

George H. Miller, Welfare Manager, Sears, Roebuck & Co., Chicago 

Frank L. Morse, Principal Carter Harrison Technical- High School, 
Chicago 

Agnes Nestor, President Women’s Trade Union League 

William B. Owen, Principal Chicago Normal School 

F.C. W.. Parker, Vocational, Secretary, Central Y. M.-C; A. Chicago 

Charles A. Prosser, Director Federal Board for Vocational Education, 
Washington, D. C. 

William M. Roberts, District Superintendent in charge of Vocational 
Schools, Chicago 

John O. Steendahl, Director Continuation School, Stout Institute, Me- 
nomonie, Wisconsin 

John H. Stube, President Principal’s Club, Chicago 

Dora Wells, Principal Lucy Flower Technical High School for Girls 

Matthem Woll, President Internation! Photo-Engraver’s Union, 
Chicago , 

Iidward F. Worst, Supervisor of Elementary Manual Training, Chicago 


THURSDAY MORNING, January 18th 10 o’clock 
Registration 


Visiting Schools and places of interest 


THURSDAY AFTERNOON, January 18th 2 o’clock 


BANQUET HALL—Auditorium Hotel 
INDUSTRIAL PREPAREDNESS 


Orening of Convention by President George H. Miller 


CHAIRMAN—William M. Roberts, Superintendent in Charge 
of Vocational Schools, Chicago 


1 The Significance of the Smith-Hughes Bill 


Alvin Dodd, Secretary National Society for the Promotion 
of Industrial Education 


2 Some Needed Developments in Vocational Education 


Wm. T. Bawden, Specialist in Industrial Education U. S. De- 
partment of Education 


3 Elementary Education as the Basis of Industrial Effi- 


ciency 


Frederick W. Roman, Professor of Economics, Syracuse 
University 


4 Is Vocational Education a Menace to Democracy ? 


Dr. David Snedden, Professor of Vocational Education, 
Teachers College, Columbia University 


Discussion led by 
Wm. B. Owen, Principal Chicago Normal College 


THURSDAY EVENING, January 18th 8 o'clock 


BANQUET HALL—Auditorium Hotel 
WORK FOR WOMEN 


CHAIRMAN—Mrs. Harlan W. Cooley, President Chica se Women’s Club 
Me Training Girls for Wage-Earning Occupations 
Florence M. Marshall, Principal Manhattan School of Trades 
for. Girls 
2 Efficiency in the Home 


Abbey Marlatt, Professor Household Economics, University 
of Wisconsin 


3. The Double Problem of Vocational Education for Wo- 
men . ‘ 
Dr. David Snedden, Professor of Vocational Education, 
Teachers’ College, Columbia University 


Discussion led by 
Miss Isabelle Bevier, Head Home Economics Department, 


University of Illinois 
Marriet. Vittum, Director Northwestern University Settle- 


ment 


FRIDAY MORNING, January 19th 10 o’clock 
AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 


BANQUET HALL—Auditorium Hotel 


CHAIRMAN—Edward T. Tobin, Superintendent of Schols 
of Cook County . 
1 thirst Steps in Agricultural Education 
Bert Ball, Secretary Crop Improvement Committee Council 
of Grain Exchanges 


2 To what Extent Can the Schools Provide Agricultural 


Education ? 
Matthew P. Adams, Director Mooseheart Vocational Insti- 
tute, Mooseheart, Illinois 
3 Co-operative Extension Work in Agricultural Education 
Eben Mumford, State Leader, County Agent Work, Michi- 
gan Agriculture College, Kast Lansing, Michigan 
4 The Farm Paper as a Factor in the Education of the 


Farmer | 
Frank B. White, Managing Director Agricultural Publishers 
Association 


Discussion led by 
Edwin. Tobin, Superintendent Schools, Cook County, Illinois 


FRIDAY AFTERNOON, January 19th 2 o'clock 


BANQUET HALL—Auditorium Hotel 


VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 
FROM THE STANDPOINT OF ORGANIZED LABOR 


CHAIRMAN—F. CW .<Parker, Vocational Secretary¥. 0M CoA, 
1 Organized Labor’s Position on Vocational Education 


Matthew Woll, Chairman Committee on Education of the 
Illinois State Federation of Labor 


2 Trade Agreements 


Charles A. Prosser, Director Dunwoody Institute, Minneap- 
olis 


Discussion led by 


P. R. Bell, Delegate Fort Wayne Federation of Labor, Fort 
Wayne, Indiana 


FRIDAY EVENING, January 19th «6:30 o'clock 
BANQUET HALL—Auditorium Hotel 


pa ahs BANQUET 
Greeting: 


George H. Miller, President Vocational Education Associa- 
tion of the Middle West 
TOASTMASTER—William J. Bogan, Principal Lane Technical School 


1 Address of Welcome 
John D. Shoop, Superintendent of Schools, Chicago 
2 Principles that Should Govern in the Framing of Voca- 
tional Education Laws 


Charles A. Prosser, Director Dunwoody Institute, Minneap- 
olis 


8 Women in Industry 


Abbey Marlatt, Professor Household Economics, University 
of Wisconsin 


4 Legislation 


David Shanahan, Speaker House of Representatives, Illinois 


SATURDAY MORNING, January 20th 9:30 o’clock 


BANQUET HALL—Auditorium Hotel 
PRINCIPLES OF AGRICULTURAL AND INDUSTRIAL 
LEGISLATION 


CHAIRMAN—Albert G. Bauersfeld, Secretary Vocational Education 
Association of the Middle West 


1 The Place of Industrial Education in the High School 
Fred D. Crawshaw, Professor of Manual Arts, University of 
Wisconsin 

2 Lesons From the Experience of Indiana 
John A. Lapp, Director Bureau of Legislative Information, 


Indiana 


3 The Outlook for Vocational Education Legislation in 


Illinois 
(a) David Shanahan, Speaker House of Representatives 


(b) Francis P. Blair, Superintendent of Public Instruction, 
Illinois 
4 The Relation of Boys’ and Girls’ Club Work to Voca- 

tional Education 
O: H. Benson,ein charge Boys’ and Girls’ Club Work, U. S. 
Department of Agriculture 

Discussion led by 
S. J. Vaughn, Head, Department Manual Arts, Northern Illin- 
ois State Normal School, DeKalb 


SATURDAY AFTERNOON, January 20th 2 o’clock 


BANQUET HALL—Auditorium Hotel 


HOW MAY EFFICIENCY IN 
VOCATIONAL EDUCATION BE OBTAINED 


CHAIRMAN—George H. Miller, President Vocational Education 
Association of the Middle West 


1 Commercial Education 


L. C. Marshall, Dean College of Commerce and Administra- 
tion, University of Chicago 


2 Training Teachers for Vocational Schools 
L. D. Harvey, President Stout Institute, Menomonie, Wis. 


3 Farm Life as Education 
Herbert Quick, Federal Farm Loan Bureau, Washington 


4 How Can Vocational Efficiency be Obtained in the 
Public Schools 
Wm. C. Bagley, Director School of Education, University of 
Illinois 
Discussion led by 


Wm. Hedges, Principal Jackson School, Chicago 
Business Meeting 


» @ + 
ke. eae 


oe , ays 


Me MW ye ean, 
iON F 
¥ es ws 


aye ie 


; 
ek 
eee My 
srg Bhs 
gM CS 
aif b 


noe’ 


NP An 


al 
eta 


- 


THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SMITH-HUGHES BILL 
DR. DAVID SNEDDEN 


Professor of Vocational Education, Teachers’ College 
Columbia University 


Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen:. It is unfortunate that Mr. 
Dodd is not here. I have tried to keep myself informed somewhat as 
to the progress of the Smith-Hughes Bill, and last Sautrday I sat 
with the Executive Committee of the National Soiety when we were 
reviewing its provisions. At the same time, I haven’t any printed 
material in my hands. There are a number of detailed points. about 
which I fear I am not certainly informed, and ail-in all, I am sorry 
that Mr. Dodd is not here, nevertheless I will try, in the course of a 
few minutes, to state the situation. 

Of course, you know that the movement for some form of national 
aid for vocational education dates back now a good many years, and in 
the meantime, matters have been thrashed over pretty well before both 
houses of Congress. Last August, the Senate passed what is known as 
the Smith Bill without, I believe, a dissenting vote. The President, ina 
recent message, in a very specific way urged its passage by the House. 
A week ago last Tuesday the House, after giving the bill four or five 
hours of very exhaustive discussion, passed it unanimously, and now it 
goes into conference, because there are differences between the Smith 
Bill of the Senate and the Hughes Bill of the House, in most respects, 
difference of detail only, but the conferences, I believe, are now being 
held and Mr. Dodd told me last Saturday that it was almost certain 
that conferences would be held this week at which it would be neces- 
sary for him to be present. | 

Now of course, the broad provisions of: the bill I think you know. 
It carries with it an appropriation of upwards of a million dollars at 
first, rising then by steps for a few years until the total of, I think, 
seven million, two hundred thousand dollars is reached, to be distri- 
buted among the states on certain bases that are named in the bill. 
The money is to be used to aid three forms of vocational education: 
industrial education, agricultural education below the college grade, 
and homemaking or home economics of vocational grades. Also, a 
certain amount of the money at first, a very considerable proportion, 
must be used to aid in the training of teachers for these lines—special 


teachers. 
13 


The money is not available for any state except by way of reim- 
bursement; reimbursement of expenditures incurred by the state itself 
or by local sub-divisions thereof for the support of vocational schools, 
to be approved by the national authority. The state is required to 
constitute or to designate an authority as a state authority with whom 
the Washington authorities can deal, and this state authority must 
have at least three members. It can be an ex officio board or a board 
ad hoe, the large responsibilities for the specific form being left to the 
state. 


The Senate bill has left out provision for home economics training, 
the House bill includes that. Everybody believes that in this confer- 
ence, differences will be adjusted, so that the vocational form of home 
economics will stand on the same footing as the other forms of voca- 
tional education. Of course, Congressmen were doubtless in confusion 
on two points here. In the first place, it has never been the intention 
that the national aid should be used to promote forms of education that 
the communities themselves had historically accepted as their respon- 
sibility. It is to assist new forms of education. Therefore, commer- 
cial education, for instance, which is or can be made vocational, is not 
assisted by this bill. Home economics has been a matter of some 
doubt. There are practically no schools in the country, I believe, offer- 
ing home economics with exclusively vocational purpose. There are 
many schools, in fact, they number thousands now, where home eco- 
nomics is included as a part of a program of general education. There ~ 
are some schools which are intermediate between these types, but I 
think the latest word from those who are responsible for this bill be- 
fore Congress is to the effect that the home economics will be put ona 
parity with the other subjects, agriculture and industries, and then 
the matter left to the administrative body to adjust. 

At present, the chief difficulty to be encountered in the conference 
is as to what is called the control, the kind of board that at Washing- 
ton shall supervise on behalf of the government the expenditure of 
this money, because supervision there must be from the national end 
if national funds are to be appropriated. The Senate Bill provides 
practically for a board composed of cabinet members with the commis- 
sioner of education a kind of executive of the cabinet members, I think, 
and then under that group, who are all in a sense ex officio, employed 
executives or specialists to take direct charge of the work. The House 
bill provides for an appointive board of laymen, appointed by the 
- President.. Iam informed that the President does not desire to have a 
complete lay board, that he feels that a complete lay board, while they 
are ethically the soundest form of government or executive body, has 


14 


this disadvantage from the standpoint of present administration at 
Washington, that a lay board gets to be quite independent of the ad- 
ministration’s influence, but that nevertheless the administration has 
to take full responsibility for its misdeeds or for whatever it does that 
brings discredit; and that is, from the standpoint of a sound adminis- 
tration, objectionable, I am told. So the President wishes a board so 
constituted that his powers over it can at least extend as far as re- 
sponsibility for its actions. 


At the last meeting of the Executive Committee of the National 
Society there was a good deal of discussion of a sort of a compromise 
control that it is believed would appeal to all parties, and I believe that 
is what is going to be laid before the conference. That is, for instance, 
there might be on this board, we will say—I won’t attempt to give the 
details now, because they are not clear in my mind, but there would 
be on this board two or three cabinet members. 

/ If the board was composed of seven members, the idea would be 
this, that three of those members would be cabinet members of the 
Departments of Commerce, Labor and Industry. A fourth should be 
the commissioner of education, who, of course, represents the Depart- 
ment of the Interior. Then in addition to these four there would be 
three members appointed by the President. You see, that would pro- 
vide a majority subject to the control of the President, because, of 
course, the control of the President over his cabinet or appointees of 
his cabinet, like the commissioner of education, is theoretically abso- 
lute. It would also provide three additional members, a minority, by 
means of which the great interests most immediately affected by this 
bill, perhaps, on one side, namely, commerce, industry and labor, could 
be represented. 

That compromise proposal will be before this conference for dis- 
cussion. I personally have not been very much interested in the partic- 
ular form of control at this time, because I feel very sure that with the 
widespread interest in this subject and the kind of men who are un- 
doubtedly going to be appointed or would be appointed normally to the 
executive positions, there would be very little difficulty in securing a 
very effective, efficient carrying out of the provisions of the Smith- 
Hughes Bill. 

I don’t know that I have anything to add at this point. I think 
perhaps some of you will have questions to ask and perhaps some of 
them I can answer and probably Mr. Bawden can answer some of them. 
Perhaps some of them can be answered by yourselves. The measure 
is looked upon as not so much a nationalaid measure as a national stim- 
ulus measure. At least the amount of seven million two hundred 


15 


thousand dollars, when distributed among all states, is not large; of 
that, four hundred seventeen thousand, on the basis of the ratios now 
established, will come to Illinois. That four hundred seventeen thou- 
sand dollars made available to assist or to add to funds appropriated by 
local communities and the state for the promotion of vocational educa- 
tion would, after all, be a very considerable sum, but some of us 
believe that the future of vocational education is so large that when 
communities appreciate what. it all means, an appropriation of four 
hundred seventeen thousand dollars for the state of Illinois, would not — 
be a very large quota. 

But after all, the future will take care of itself in that respect if 
the national government is convinced that an investment of this sort 
is profitable for the country as a whole. If, as the President says, it | 
proves to be a part of a program of genuine preparedness, and for my 
part I can see no other way to interpret it, the capacity and doubtless 
the disposition of the national government to add more will manifest 
itself. | 
I am not sure that this subject at the present moment demands 
further consideration. I mean that I could take up a good deal more 
time talking on this and not add much to what I have saidi, but if there 
are questions that you want to ask, I believe that I can answer a good 
many of them out of the little experience that I have had. Mr. Chair- 
man, I think that is all I can say now. | 

THE CHAIRMAN: Dr. Snedden has stated that you are at liber- 
ty to ask him questions if there are any points regarding this bill that 
are not clear in your mind. We will devote a little time to that at this 
time. Does any one have any question to ask Dr. Snedden? I believe 
Dr. Snedden stated, did he not, that the national government, through 
the state, would reimburse a local community for what it had expended 
for this particular purpose to the extent of an equal amount? 

DR. SNEDDEN: I think that is the general intent. 

THE CHAIRMAN: Just for the payment of salaries of teachers 
and for the training of teachers? 

DR. SNEDDEN: Yes. The national aid is granted for the train- 
ing of teachers and as a contribution towards the salaries of teachers. 
It is not a contribution towards equipment or other expenditures. That, 
of course, is probably to arrive at an easy and simple administrative © 
basis as much as anything else. 


16 


SOME NEEDED DEVELOPMENTS IN 
VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 


WILLIAM T. BAWDEN 


Specialist in Industrial Education, 
U. S. Bureau of Education, Washington, D. C. 


A bill providing Federal aid to the states for the stimulation of 
vocational education passed the Senate on July 31, 1916. A similar 
bill was before the House of Representatives for consideration on sev- 
eral occasions, and was passed January 9, 1917. 


APPROVAL OF THE OBJECTS OF THE BILL 


The first general impression gained during the progress of the 
debate was that of general approval of the objects and purposes of the 
proposed legislation. The bill was characterized by one member as the 
most important before the Sixty-fourth Congress, and referred to by 
another as the most meritorious piece of legislation considered in 
recent years. Similar sentiments were voiced repeatedly during the 
_ discussion. One member in the course of his remarks said: 


_ “After being called upon at the last session of this 
Congress to vote for more than $843,000,000 to sustain 
the military arm of the Government, including pensions 
for service in past wars, and since observing the invita- 
tion contained in the estimates now submitted, to vote 
for more than $892,000,000 for military purposes, 
amounting together to more than $1,735, 000,000 in the 
two sessions of the Sixty-fourth Congress, it is with a 
feeling of genuine pleasure and a delightful relief to be 
given the opportunity today to vote for an appropria- 
tion like this without associating with its expenditure 
the contemplation of bloodshed, misery, and death.”’ 


In reply to direct questions, it was emphasized several times during 
the discussion, with evident signs of approval, that the beneficiaries 
of the proposed legislation are not to be the colleges and universities, 
and the favored youth who have the means and the opportunity to 
resort to these institutions; but rather the great army of boys and 
girls who have in the past been obliged to enter upon the responsibili- 
ties of life without intelligent guidance and with inadequate training. 
Expressions of solicitude for the interests of these boys and girls, and 


17 


of the desire that something worth while may be done to equalize edu- 
cational opportunities and to provide schools that will minister to the 
practical needs of the people, repeatedly drew applause from both sides 
of the House. 

There can be no question, therefore, that the proposals for legisla- 
tion in aid of vocational education were considered in a very friendly 
and favorable atmosphere. 


1. DOUBTS AS TO EFFICACY OF PLANS PROPOSED 


The second point of view manifest in the discussions was that of 
frankly expressed doubt as to the extent to which the proposed legisla- 
tion will attain these admittedly desirable ends and accomplish the re- 
sults promised by its supporters. 


2. CO-ORDINATION WITH CHILD LABOR LEGISLATION 


Of equal importance, perhaps, is the question of the relation 
between educational legislation and child labor legislation. For years 
we have been witnessing the achievements of an active propaganda for 
child labor legislation, more or less dissociated from any corresponding 
movement for educational legislation. The sponsors for the former 
admit the need of the latter, but contend that they are able to accom- 
plish more by concentrating their efforts on a single objective. They 
hold; futher, that when they took the field there was already in exis- 
tence a great and powerful public school system, with skilled leaders 
amply able to look after educational interests, whereas there was no 
agency organized to look after the interests of boys and girls who had 
left school and who found themselves helpless in the struggle against 
the working conditions that prevailed in stores, mills, and factories. 

Whether we attempt to place the responsibility or not, we can not 
justify our neglect of the fact that a hiatus exists between the close of 
the period of compulsory schooling and the beginning of the period 
when young persons are permitted by law to work for wages. The 
dangers both to society and to the youth are obvious, and need not be 
elaborated on this occasion. 

It is of doubtful utility, to say the least, to develop an elaborate and 
costly system of vocational schools, designed especially to minister to 
the needs of boys and girls hitherto neglected, without adopting mea- 
sures to bring these pupils into the schools in order that their needs 
may be studied. It is during the two or three years immediately pre- 
ceding the entrance into vocational life that the school might be of the 
greatest help to young people, and if our laws are permitted to operate 
in such a way as to free boys and girls from the control of the school 


18 


during these years the vocational school will fail of rendering its maxi- 
mum service. 


The development of vocational courses will doubtless serve to 
make school work more attractive, and may be expected to hold pupils 
in school who now tend to leave at the earliest opportunity. This 
should not be made the excuse for perpetuating a condition that is 
indefensible from every point of view. , 

It is customary to regard the completion of the eight years of the 
elementary school, at about fourteen or fifteen years of age, as the 
minimum amount of schooling that should be secured by every child. 
Whenever this or any other amount of schooling is specified in the law 
of any state it is designated as the minimum. Nevertheless, many 
parents, with their children, look upon the minimum provided by law 
as the maximum of attainment toward which they strive, and with 
which they purpose to content themselves. And it is a matter of com- 
mon knowledge that a very considerable proportion of boys and girls 
in all the states do not receive even approximately these minimum 
amounts of education. 

One valid objection to raising the age limit of compulsory school- 
ing has been the inability or unwillingness of the schools to organize 
classes that would appeal to the types of pupils who have left school as 
soon as the law permits. It has been held to be useless to attempt to 
_ force boys and girls back into the schools as they now exist in the face 
of demonstrated inherent lack of holding power of these schools over 
certain types of adolescent youth. This objection should be effectually 
removed by the organization and perfection of the vocational school, 
while, at the same time, the raising of the age limit will give the voca- 
tional school a firmer hold on its pupils and a more assured place in the 
school system. 

One very important development needed, therefore, in order to 
make vocational education fulfill its function is to co-ordinate educa- 
tional legislation, and especially legislation for compulsory schooling 
and legislation affecting vocational education, with child labor legisla- 
tion. 


38. INDUSTRY’S CONTRIBUTION 


A third much needed development is a determination of the contri- 
bution that industry, using the term in the broadest sense, can and 
will make to the solution of the problems of vocational education. As 
vocational surveys multiply it will become increasingly easy to show 
the existence of the needs on the part of groups of workers, of various 
types of knowledge and skill. It must not be assumed, however, that 


19 


such a demonstration is all that is necessary to establish the duty-and 
responsibility of the school. 


4. NEW LEGISLATION 


There are indications that during the current year there will be 
more legislation enacted dealing with vocational education than has 
been the case in any single year heretofore. The legislatures of forty 
or more states are in session this year, and doubtless in all of them 
efforts will be made to secure whatever action may be necessary to 
enable the states to comply with the terms and provisions of Federal 
law. In some states this minimum of legislation is all that will be at- 
tempted at present; in some states, perhaps, commissions will be ap- 
pointed to investigate and bring in recommendations for future legisla- 
tion; a few states, possibly, may inaugurate at once definite programs 
for vocational education based upon study of local needs and available 
knowledge of what has been accomplished elsewhere. 


5. PREVOCATIONAL EDUCATION 


Still another greatly needed development is in the field that has 
been called prevocationaal education. The term “prevocational” has 
annoyed many persons, and some have spent so much time and energy 
criticizing the term and explaining why it ought not to be used, that — 
they have neglected to note the valuable features of the work for which 
it stands. 

The chief objection to the term prevocational could be removed by 
giving to the work the breadth of content suggested by the term itself. 
The prefix “pre” implies a special kind of training that preceded voca- 
tional training, and hence is not itself vocational: It is designed for 
the young person who has not yet made a choice of vocation, or a choice 
among several opportunities for vocational education that are offered, 
and who is presumed to receive therefrom definite assistance in the 
making of such choices. The latter part of the term—“‘vocational’— 
implies a much greater variety of activities, and a much broader out- 
look into possible future careers, than is included in a program that 
might more legitimately be called ‘‘preindustrial,” or “precommercial,” 
or some other one of the terms less comprehensive than “prevoca- 
tional.” 

In order to be entitled properly to the use of the term, therefore, 

a program for prevocational education should embrace a variety of 
~ activities sufficient to include some representation of each of the im- 
portant groups of possible vocations, from among which it is assumed 
that a choice is to be made, and to include something corresponding to 
the introductory phases of each of the main subdivisions of vocational 


20 


~ education (professional, agricultural, commercial, industrial, and 
homemaking), the opportunity to enter upon a course in some one of 
which presumably will be open as soon as.a definite choice can be made. 

The importance of further work in this field is indicated by reflect- 
ing upon the increase in the efficiency of the vocational school that 
would follow from limiting its efforts to those who come having made 
rational and fairly definite choices of future careers, based upon such 
trying-out as might be afforded in a broadly-conceived prevocational 
school. It is the common experience of the vocational school— 
whether the trade school, the business college, the normal school, or 
the divinity school—to find that many candidates apply for admission 
whose determination to prepare for and to pursue a given vocation is 
based upon factitious or adventitious considerations, rather than upon 
an ascertained or demonstrated fitness for success in the chosen calling. 
In the aggregate a vast amount of time and energy, and vast sums of 
money, have been expended in attempts to prepare persons for occupa- 
tions in which they can not be successful or contented. It seems rea- 
sonable to suppose that a considerable portion of this expenditure 
might be saved to the individual, to the institutions, and to society, by 
a well-organized plan for assisting young persons to “find themselves.” 


6. TYPES OF PUPIL 


Finally, there is need of development of more effective means for 
dealing with certain types of pupils to whom the vocational school is 
assumed to be able to make a special appeal. Not all boys and girls 
who enter the vocational school will achieve brilliant success therein. 
Perhaps the proportion of successes will be no greater than it is in the 
traditional school.. In any event, there will be the temptation to turn 
- many away because they do not give promise of accomplishing all that 
enthusiastic teachers and ambitious principals desire. 

The traditional school has been charged with attempting to solve 
some of its problems by weeding out those pupils who appear to be 
unable to do the work prescribed, and discouraging the attendance of | 
those who, because of marked individuality, find it difficult to adapt 
themselves to the formality and rigidity of regimental procedure. 
There are indications here and there that the vocational school is not 
always able to resist the tendency to dispose of some of its difficulties 
in this way. “Out of sight, out of mind” may apply to the school 
teacher as well as to another, and too often the teacher has been able 
to forget a troublesome pupil who simply disappears. 

The great wave of popular demand for vocational education has 
been due in part to a recognition of the fact that, for whatever reasons, 


21 


there are large groups of young persons who are not served by the 


existing public schools, and to the belief that somehow these young 
people will be reached and served by the proposed program of voca- 
tional education. 

It is an enormous task, for the boys and girls whose education has 
been neglected hitherto are of many types. And yet it seems inevitable 
that vocational education will be judged by the success with which it 
adapts its program to these varying needs. 


22 


ELEMENTARY EDUCATION AS THE BASIS OF 
INDUSTRIAL EFFICIENCY 


FREDERICK W. ROMAN 


Professor of Economics, Syracuse University, New York 


When we speak of elementary education as a basis for efficiency, we 
must understand that we are talking about some kind of a school sys- 
tem that will enable the children to carry on the struggle for existence 
successfully. Now, the problems with which the children of the coun- 
try are confronted from age to age, from decade to decade, differ. They 
shift, and for that reason the things that we teach in our schools con- 
stantly change in order to give the students at every moment the 
highest possible efficiency. 

There have been those in recent times in educational work who 
have been so concerned with the production of goods, with the making 
of things, with the technical side of education, that they have felt that 
the main thing to be done in the schoolroom, elementary and high 
school, was to so organize its curriculum and management that it 
would become a very efficient machine in producing things. 

Well, that is good. We need to produce things. Despite the fact 
that this is the richest country in the world and despite the fact that 
we are a very wealthy nation, there is still a great deal of inefficiency 
in production, and no one would quarrel for a moment with any plan 
whereby the efficiency in producing things is encouraged and increased. 
That must ever be a part of the school system, and the elementary 
school children must be trained with that attitude of mind that will 
make them earnest and zealous to be really useful in actually produc- 
ing real things. 

So much for that proposition. We do not disparage the production 
of things, and our schools must put more goods and more power into 
the work in order to still produce more goods in a shorter time, to give 
us more products at a minimum expenditure of effort. However, when - 
we look over the vast thousands and millions of our school children in 
the United States, and ask ourselves this question, What problems 
have these children to face in the public schools; what are the things 
that they have to meet? Is it the question of producing more meat 
and more bread, more food and more clothing in this country? Not 
necessarily. The truth is, you admit, we are already rich. The truth 
is that it is the question of distributing the wealth which we already 


23 


have, and that primarily confronts the American people at the present 
time. 

The problem of production was the paramount issue in times past, 
because the nations were starving. The people did not have very much 
food or clothing and it was necessary to know, What can we do to 
produce goods.? When the industrial schools were started a hundred 
years ago in Wurtemberg and in Saxony and those German countries, 
they started because the people were in famine. That was the origin 
of those schools, and the people who studied the question of education 
in those days said, What can we do to make the boys and girls more 
efficient in order to enable them to produce things ? and for that reason 
in those days it was the question of teaching the children how to 
become producers. 

At the present time the problem has shifted. I am in no way dis- 
paraging the question of production, but the paramount issue of today 
is the distribution of goods, is to help the children to make it easy to 
a fair position, a just position towards the owners of property, and to 
take a due responsibility as to their rights and also as to their duties 
and obligations in these matters, because we must teach the children 
obligations in these matters, because we must teach the children 
rights, and not rights only, but we must also teach teach them duties. 

Now, we have certain people who are constantly agitating and 
trying to get more rights. It is rights, rights, rights, and mention is 
never made of duties. 

My point is then, if we are really to take up seriously this question 
of elementary education as the basis of efficiency, we must deal pri- 
marily with the question of teaching the chilidren along the lines of 
collective action, in order that these difficulties and this great battle 
which is becoming more intense from day to day, this battle between 
labor and capital, may be solved without an industrial war. That is 
the whole proposition. 

The forces of capital and labor are getting ready for a great battle. 
Now, in some places, instead of seeking the solution and instead of 
going into the schools and actually teaching the children how these 
questions may be solved, I find that in certain states they establish 
the state constabulary, New York State at the present time, is an ex- 
cellent illustration. 

And what is the state constabulary? Ladies and gentlemen, it is 
nothing more or less than an industrial army in order to control the 
strikers. That is all. When you ask these people, “Why do you want 
an industrial army to settle the problems between capital and labor?” 
they say, “The militia will no longer suffice.” They symphasized with 


24 


the laborers, and the danger of mutiny is so great that the militia will 
no longer suffice to settle the difficulties between labor and capital, and 
for that reason, we need a special organization under the control of 
the governor so that these men may be controlled and sent from town 
to town, just as soon as a strike breaks out. 

In other words, instead of going to the Sern eoeire to teach the 
masses of the children an attitude of mind that will lead to justice, we 
still have those who say, “Let’s settle it by force.” Force never settled 
anything. Instead of meeting the difficulty and teaching the people so 
that they may reach a proper adjustment of these matters, they ex- 
pend their fortunes in making more powerful the engines of warfare. 


What will be the result of an industrial army to settle peace? It 
won’t settle peace. The only point is, labor will still become more 
bitter and more powerful and the time will come when you will have a 
strike of still more enormous proportions and this industrial army will 
still be unconquered. In other words, we are on the wrong track. 
Force never brought peace. We can not, then, be content to settle the 
difficulties between labor and capital by devoting the time of the public 
schools to the mere production of goods. We must remember that this 
is the richest country in the world at the present time and that these 
difficulties have been arising. Now, if we expect to settle these difficul- 
ties, it will be necessary that we expend a certain amount of time in 
all the grades, teaching the pupils citizenship, patriotism, and their 
responsibility towards the nation and towards life. It will be some- 
thing more than simply teaching them to read and to write However, 
even that is necessary. 

We can go back to Germany and we find that in the ennien days 
when Germany started out to become efficient, one of the very first 
things that they learned, especially in Prussia, was that the boys and 
girls must be taught better writing, better reading, better arithmetic. 

Now, that dispels the whole idea as has been thought by some in 
this country, that this whole question of efficiency and industrial pre- 
paredness and all the rest of it could be taken charge of by an organ- 
ization quite separate from the public school system. They think 
that we can make great things out of these boys who have never been 
in the grades and who have been wandering around on the streets. 
The truth is, the experience of Germany proves just the opposite, 
German schools and the records show that in order to make these boys 
and girls efficient, it was necessary to give them real, definite training, 
so that the question of industrial preparedness and efficiency in the 
industrial schools is simply one continuation of the learning process. 

So much for that side of the proposition. Now, let us consider it 


25 


from the standpoint of the spirit which we expect to put into the 
schools at the present time. You know this question of getting ready 
for real efficiency depends not only upon adopting new ideas, but also 
upon our power of rejecting a lot of fads and notions that we are ex- 
pected to adopt from year to year and decade to decade. 

Now, everybody wants industrial efficiency ; and we were told just 
yesterday that all difficulties should be settled by discussion, by justice, 
and I am astonished to find the large numberof teachers who are chang- 
ing their whole line of tactics. Why, teachers, a lot of you, told me 
yesterday that whenever you had any trouble on the playground in 
the management of the children, whenever the boys got into a little 
fight of some kind or other, you told me over and over again that the 
thing you did was to call the boys in and discuss this matter and that 
you settled this question by justice, that you talked it over; and then 
you told me that you had a great point to prepare that boy for life. 
You remember how you used to tell me about it. You said that now 
this was a sample, that this way of discussing this thing in the public 
schools and settling it here,. was the modelthat heshould take with him 
in after life, that that was the way that big men did, that nations did, 
and that that was the great goal, that all difficulties were to be settled 
by justice, that the armament of justice was to lead to the highest 
points of efficiency. 

Now, some of you tell me that the armament of the world is to lead 
to justice. I wonder why this turn? Why have you changed your 
base? Why did you argue one thing yesterday and argue a difterent 
thing today? What things have happened in the world to make you 
throw away the idealism of yesterday and get ready to accept the 
brutality of tomorrow? These are the things that I want to know. I 
want to know, futhermore, if you haven’t told me over and over again 
that you have regarded as the greatest thing in American life the 
power of initiative. You told me over and over again, and haven’t we 
learned from our books that the American people have invented more 
things than has been the case of any other nation, that the inventive 
power of American people, because of its initiative, has been the great- 
est birthright of the American people? 

Now, some of you are telling me that the thing you want to do is 
- to fasten a new system on our schoolroom for the sake of getting effi- 
ciency, namely, military training. I find that in some cities in this 
country they are talking about putting military training in all the 
grades. Some are putting it in the high schools, some are putting it 
partially in the high schools. In fact, the whole. country is simply wild 
over this new doctrine. 


26 


Let us analyze it. I point you again, ladies and gentlemen, to 
Germany. We know Germany’s efficiency. We have studied and 
analyzed that before, many and many a time. In fact, I have been so 
great a champion of it that in Syracuse and in New York they have 
sometimes accused me of being paid by the German government to talk 
for the German schools and school system. I would hate to see my 
country adopt the vices of Germany without her virtues. This is the 
thing that is frightening me at the present time. 

And what do I mean? You know about the American initiative, 
do you not? You know that we have invented more things than any 
other nation in the world. There is something about the American— 
he can do things. You know that Germany hasn’t got it, don’t you? 
You know that when you employ a German workman, you get a very 
efficient man. He is efficient. He can do anything that he has been 
taught to do, well, and thoroughly ; but everybody who has visited the 
German schools tells us that there is a military air in the German 
school system. Everything is standardized and initiative is not high. 
Everybody gets things from above, but when it comes to real leader- 
ship, the American holds the record. You admit that America holds 
the records because Americans have initiative. 

Iam going to ask you, are you going to be instrumental in fasten- 
ing a system on the United States that will standardize and that will 
destroy initiative? Do you know that military training does not en- 
courage initiative? You go into a German school and everything is 
done just alike, and I hold that that philosophy is an incorrect philos- 
ophy, because it inhibits independent thinking, it inhibits freedom, and 
eventually the masses who are trained under such a system will accept 
-what the leaders tell them and if the leaders are not right, they may 
be led into a tremendous world destruction and do themselves great 
injustice and actually do the world a great deal of wrong, because inde- 
pendent thinking is gone. That is what I want to know—do you want 
that? 

And as a matter of fact, if I may say it here, because it is pretty 
hard to talk about these subjects without showing your hand, I hold 
that that is the very thing that has taken place in Germany. She 
~ has secured an industrial efficiency at a price that is too great to pay. 
Yes, there is such a thing as an efficiency that is too costly. There are 
certain things that are simply too great in price to pay for a certain 
type of efficiency. When you get your efficiency so standardized that it 
strikes initiative, that it strikes freedom of thinking and independence 
of action, you have already paid a price that is too great for your 
efficiency. That is the proposition that I maintain. 


27 


I oppose some of these new fads for a second reason. Now notice 
this thing that we are supposed to add to our schoolrooms at the pres- 
ent time in order to get this efficiency. People tell us, “Let’s have a 
lot of this military training in the schools and high schools, because it 
will make us so efficient.’” Willit? What will it really do? It teaches 
the pupils that things are to be settled by force, and yesterday we 
taught the pupils that things were to be settled by justice, by reason. 
Now you know this is true, that whenever you get some of that system 
of force for settling things, those who advocate it are never satisfied. 
As soon as they get some of it, they want more. They never were sat- 
isfied even in Germany. I was over there for several years, and altho 
I think that most of the people outside of Germany now feel that Germ- 
any had too much military training for her own good and for the good 
of the world, yet those who were backing the military training never 
thought they had enough. I fear it is going to lead to the destruction 
of a very wonderful civilization. 

Let us analyze. You start putting in a system for the sake of 
getting efficiency, and that system is backed up by force. Those people 
say, ‘“Now let’s have some of this training for one year. Let’s have it 
for two years. Let’s have it in all the high schools. Let’s have it in 
the grades.”” Then some people will always object to it. There will be 
some who say, “I don’t like this idea of running things by force. Why 
should we have it?” Oh, you know what the answer will be. They say 
that we have enemies, and we must prepare for enemies. 

My second powerful objection—notice the first one: it strikes ini- 
tiative, then it cuts our freedom—my second point is that the whole 
system puts us under the everlasting obligation of imagining that we 
have enemies. That is the point. I wonder if I make that clear? I 
say to you that if we once start with that system, we will always have 
to be defending it and there will always be those who want more and 
those who don’t want it, and the answer will be that we have enemies, 
and we will imagine enemies. We will imagine that Japan is after us. 
We will imagine that England is after us. We will imagine that 
Germany is after us. 

I want to tell you that is just what Germany did in order to get 
that system more firmly established. I was over there; I have been in 
the German schools many and many a time when they were teaching 
courses in telegraphy and other subjects and the discussion would come 
up over and over again, “Why do you do this?” and the answer would 
be, “Why, when we get into a war with England, we will cut the cables, 
and so on.” That was in 1909. Now they want still more of it. 

And why do they want it here? Because we are getting ready for 


28 


@ 


war. DoI make this point clear, that when you start with that sort of 
a doctrine, you put the nation in the position where it will have to 
actually create nation-hatred in order to justify the system, and when 
you ask them what is the reason for this, they say, “Well, I guess we 
have got some enemy.” “What enemy? ” ‘Well, I don’t know. I 
think we had better get ready for Japan or England or Germany.” 


Now I find a great many getting ready for war with Japan who 
don’t know a single thing about Japan. Thatis a fact; they don’t know 
a single thing about Japan, but in order to back up a certain sort of 
system, they find themselves under the necessity of getting enemies. 
What is the situation about Japan? Japan is just a little larger than 
California. It has half our people and only one-sixth of the soil of 
Japan is capable of cultivation of any sort. We have fifty-eight million 
head of cattle in the United States, whereas Japan has only a little over 
two million. We have nearly sixty millions of hogs in the United 
States of many kinds and varieties, and Japan has scarcely any at all. 
The truth, ladies and gentlemen, is that many people talk about getting 
ready for war with Japan that have no facts on which to base this 
thing; and if you start with this system in your schoolroom on the 
basis of getting industrial efficiency, you will put yourselves under 
obligations and the nation under obligations to constantly keep imag- 
ining that situation. 

You see that, that is clear? You prepare this thing for war and 


you have got to have war. Prepare for peace and you may be able to 
. avert war; and if you prepare for peace and are not able to avert war, 


you will still be better prepared for war. 


A great many people say they want the Swiss system. Now there 
are two wonderful things about that: the phrase is short and terse 
and the alliteration is good. It has two good points. I find that it is 
the alliteration that appeals. Of all the phrases, that Swiss system 
sounds the best. Otherwise, they don’t know that it has any particular 
qualification, except that it is a phrase that is put just right. It fits 
the mouth well. 

Now, there is a third powerful reason that I have against the 
introduction of this system for the sake of getting efficiency. You 
start in with a system of what you call national preparedness. You 
teach the people then to get into frame of mind that is national. How- 
ever, what about our commerce? We are preparing this country, and 
Senate, that is why. In other words, we were at fault. It is our fault 
that we haven’t such a treaty as that with England at the present 
time. 

Now about getting war with other nations. You know there are a 


29 


that is right and proper, for all the nations. We are teaching the people 
of the United States to get ready for commerce with South America. 
We are teaching them to get ready for commerce with the Orient and 
with all the world. Now I hold that that is legitimate and proper; 
that is right. The greatest possible division of labor that we can have 
is what this country needs. All nations are entitled to that. Now 
notice: We teach a world-wide expansion, as far as material things are 
concerned, but on top of this world-wide expansion, (commerce and 
trade routes that lead to all the nations) we coop up a spirit of mind 
that is only national. | 

Will it work? No. Don’t you see the point, the inconsistency? 
Don’t you see you are preparing a development of materialism that 
includes all the world, but on top of that world-wide control of material 
things, you are cooping up a frame of mind that is national, based on 
preparing to hate everybody else and getting ready to quarrel with 
everybody else on the basis of nationalism. 

Now I am for patriotism, but I am for an understanding and a 
clear patriotism, and I am sure that in order to get this real efficiency, 
it will be quite necessary for us to analyze our own motives at times. 

Why, you remember just about six or eight months ago in the last 
Congress, when the question of war came up with the various nations, 
some people have said that we must get ready for war with Japan, and 
I noticed that Congressman Mann of Illinois said that we thought we 
needed to get ready for war with England. That was his statement in 
the last Congress, in the previous session. Now why? How is that— 
get ready for war with England? What are the facts, ladies and gen- 
tlemen? Do you remember that in Taft’s administration we came very 
nearly having an arbitration treaty with England whereby all ques- 
tions were to be settled, even including questions of honor, by arbitra- 
tion? Taft tried very hard to get that treaty through, and if we had 
had that treaty we might have been able to avert this world war. Taft 
wanted a treaty with England whereby all questions with England 
would be settled forever, even including questions of honor. Even- 
tually in Wilson’s administration they passed some kind of an arbitra- 
tion treaty with England that is not nearly so inclusive as that one 
was. Why didn’t we get that first one with England? Do you wonder 
why? Not because the English Parliament was against it but that 
treaty was not ratified because it was opposed by the United States 
good many people who are advocating this thing of preparedness and 
they don’t stay put long enough so that I can really find out where 
they are. I remember in last June and July, there were a great many 
people who talked about preparedness... “Oh,” they said, “We have 


30 


got to get ready for war.” “Oh, coming right now, it it?” “Oh, yes, 
we are threatened all sorts of ways.” And they had a preparedness 
parade in New York and something like one hundred fifty thousand 
people marched in it; and since that time the recruiting stations in 
New York have been able to enlist sixty-six enrollments. There are 
thousands and thousands of people who are ready for this thing, but 
they want the other fellow to do it. 

In other words, that is the thing that the schoolrooms need to 
teach. Why, ladies and gentlemen, let’s begin to teach patriotism in 
our schools. I am with you on that proposition. Let’s have patriotism. 
I think the country lacks it. I think it is short on patriotism! We 
need more of patriotism. 

Now there were, then, those who said that we must get ready for 
war. They said that we are threatened with war. Well, I notice that 
we had an election on November 7 and about a week before that elec- 
tion, when the slogan was passed all over the country and it said, “He 
kept us out of war, he kept us out of war,” why a lot of these people 
said, “He kept us out of war? What war? Nobody wanted to fight 
us.” They-changed the whole slogan. Let’s not forget some of these 
things now. I want you to stay put, so that you can be in position for 
attack. That is the idea and if you will do that, I will think a lot of 
you. I will just think you are fine if you will just stay put and don’t 
get on both sides of the proposition at once. 

I have answered the question concerning Japan; I have answered 
the question concerning England. Some people even said that we had 
been kept out of war, but that the German Kaiser had kept us out of 
war. Well, the proposition doesn’t seem to be as dangerous then as it 
looks. This thing is all over and nowhere is there any definite talk 
about it that you can really tie to. 

Now let us see what we really do want in this scheme of industrial 
efficiency in order to be really prepared for war. In the first place, we 
need to unite this country itself on a basis of patriotism, on a basis of 
idealism so that we may have difficulties between labor and capital 
settled easily and with ease of adjustment. That is the first thing that 
we need, a real scheme of preparedness. We cannot afford to have a 
divided front on our own soil. That will mean a better distribution of 
wealth, a better division of wealth. You know. that in the last twenty- 
five years the wealth of this country has increased four times over. 
In 1890 this nation was worth sixty billion dollars, last year it was two 
hundred twenty-eight billion dollars. In 1890 fifty-two per cent of the 
people owned five per cent of the wealth, and last year it took sixty- 
five per cent of the people to own five per cent. In spite of the fact 


31 


that it increased that much, it was so concentrated that it now takes 
sixty-five per cent of the people to own five percent of the wealth; and 
the Industrial Relations Commission showed that sixty-five per cent of 
the wealth of the United States is owned and controlled by two per 
cent of the people. 

These are the things we need to look after. Not only do we need 
to get after the question of distribution, not only do we need to teach 
more idealism but we need to look after the health of the country, all 
these things. We need to abolish a lot of our parasitical industries in 
this country. We have got thousands and thousands of men and boys 
engaged in industries absolutely parasitical and destructive of labor 
and capital. 

These are the things that the schoolroom must take up, and we 
must teach a higher idealism concerning these things. I am astonish- 
ed to find a great many people will talk about military preparedness 
and their heads will hang low when you say, “What are you doing 
towards the abolition of parasitical industries in this country, when 
you realize that this country is, aS you say, in need?” 

I wonder if we can, ladies and gentlemen, get enough idealism into 
the American schoolroom at the present time so that we can, during 
times of peace, adopt those wonderful things that the nations of war 
have been compelled to adopt in war. If we have got some real patriot- 
ism and if we have this real idealism, I want to join hands with the pre- 
paredness people. I want you to extend to me your hands, that you 
will use your influence and I will use mine, to get my country to adopt 
in times of peace the things that the nations of war have been com- 
pelled to adopt in times of war for the sake of victory. Let’s look after 
the liquor business. 

A German soldier that was captured in England said last week 
that this war had accomplished three things, and I would like to have 
this nation get three things in time of peace. He said that this war 
had taught the Englishman to fight, the Frenchman to pray and the 
Russian to be sober. Good! These are the lessons of war. Let’s get 
it here in times of peace with idealism. Those are the things that will 
make us truly prepared for the conflict that is to come. These are the 
things that we must take up in our schools. That is the idealism for 
which we stand. 

I am in favor of something of an army. I am in favor of some- 
thing of a navy, but I am more concerned in getting more for the 
money we have already spent rather than doubling the appropriations, 
because I look at the figures and I find that before this war started 
this nation appropriated three hundred million dollars annually for 


32 


army and navy and Germany only appropriated three hundred eighty- 
nine millions. The only difference was, Germany has both an army 
and navy and our preparedness people told us that we had neither. I 
am concerned more with that attitude of mind which will prepare hon- 
estly the masses of the people to see to it that we get more for the 
money we have already spent and are spending, and when we increase 
the expenditures to see to it that we get increased efficiency, but I am 
not wholly content with simply doubling the appropriations. 

Oh, yes, we need all these things. We need appropriations, but we 
need a whole lot more than material wealth in this country. We need 
some realidealism. This is a materialistic age, and being materialistic, 
it has shortened brain-power. We have already got more wealth than 
we know what to do with. The nation itself has not enough brain- 
power, enough idealism, to function properly with the material posses- 
sions which it already possesses. The great question is not how to 
produce more wealth, but how to hold the blessings which democracy 
has already extended. 


35 


IS VOCATIONAL EDUCATION A MENACE TO 
DEMOCRACY? 


DR. DAVID SNEDDEN 
Professor of Vocational Education, Teachers College, Columbia University 


New York City 


Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen: There are many symptoms 
of public interest in the promotion of vocational education, of which 
the passage of state legislation and now the almost complete passage 
of certain national legislation are among the most manifest, although 
perhaps not the most fundamental. At the same time it must be rec- 
ognized that there are a considerable number of people in this country 
who view this movement for vocational education with disquiet, and 
the subject that has come to me today is not of my own choosing, tho 
it is of my welcoming, because in asking your Program Committee 
what phases of this subject they thought needed discussion at the pres- 
ent time, this was one—the question of the relation of vocational edu- 
cation to democracy and to our democratic institutions. 

It seems to me that there are perhaps three classes of people who 
are thus distrustful of vocational education in its relation to demo- 
cracy. There is first of course, as we all well know, an ancient tradi- 
tion in academic circles, dating back thousands of years literally, that 
only that kind of education is worth while that takes our boys and 
girls away from the manual occupations, the dirty trades or the sordid 
occupational pursuits. That is a very ancient schoolmaster attitude 
and a very natural one, too, because especially before the coming of 
compulsory school attendance, the schoolmaster always had a struggle 
to keep his boys and girls apart from the practical occupations of life 
as long as possible. He always realized that there were selfish parents . 
who wanted to send their children early to work. In the mediaeval days | 
there was always the pressure to take the boy out of the academic 
school and put him into apprenticeship; so that we have surviving still 
a very strong attitude prevailing in academic circles. 

The teachers of our classical subjects in high schools naturally 
dream of the future of their brightest pupils in terms of professional 
callings and some of leadership, and they dislike very naturally to 
think of them as pursuing callings that are followed by the rank and 
file. They tell the story on a Boston school teacher who was having 
some trouble with a boy in her school room, and she said to him by the 


34 


way of warning, “If you don’t study harder and better, when you leave 
school you will have to work for a living.” Well, we can easily see 
what her conception of work was. 

Now, I think that the opposition from that source often seizes 
upon any pretext to call education undemocratic. Then there is an- 
other class of people in this country, fortunately a diminishing num- 
ber, who have always felt that public support of education and more 
particularly, making it free education, was undemocratic. Some of 
you may have read a most interesting article on this subject by a 
noted educator in Connecticut a couple of years ago, a Mr. Fox, advo- 
cating fees in high schools and insisting that the present system of 
free tuition in high schools was most absolutely undemocratic. That 
same opposition has been encountered in the formation of our state 
universities. They were long alleged to be undemocratic because all 
the people had to contribute to their support and only a few, the chil- 
dren of the rich or the elite, were going to get any benefit from them. 
Farther back, in the early history of New England, you can find the 
same argument against free elementary schools, that the man who 
didn’t have any children had to pay the support of the children in 
school of the man who was negligent enough to have children. That 
is simply a mistaken interpretation of democracy. 

Then there is another class of people in this country at the pres- 
_ ent time, very small but very influential on the whole, because it em- 
braces some of the ablest thinkers in our midst in its numbers, who are 
not at all pleased with the present trend of things in the commercial 
and industrial world and who, while admitting all of the iniquities 
that will follow in the train of our millions of children who will 
never have the opportunity to equip themselves, are nevertheless con- 
vinced that until there has been accomplished a complete reorganiza- 
tion of our whole democratic order, it isn’t right that the public school 
system should take on new functions that in any way whatever seem 
to have an affiliative relationship with these existing industrial ills of 
the social order. 

In other words, I think some of these people would say, there is a 
situation that is bad and it will have to get worse before it can get 
better, and consequently the attempt to put in effect merely ameliroa- 
tive measures may in the long run do more harm than good, just ex- 
actly as when one tries to poultice a wound or an illness instead of hay- 
. ing a fundamental operation. 

My own personal feeling is that the people SG are speaking along 
that line at the present time are not very familiar with the fundamen- 
tal facts of our economic life and of the conditions that are bound to 


35 


confront us in proportion as we try to maintain on limited areas in any 
country a very large and increasing number of people. In other words, I 
fear that the anticipation of anything like fundamental changes in 
the near future in the social order are so utopian or so visionary that 
at least we ought not to base our programs upon them until we see our 
way rather clearly, which I do not think we do now at all. 

Now, it seems to me worth while for us to analyze pretty definitely 
and in as specific terms as we know how, this question of the relation 
of vocational education to democracy as we are gradually building it in 
this country. But as preliminary to this discussion it is essential that 
I indicate what I mean by vocational education, because there are really » 
various interpretations abroad at the present time. I interpret voca- 
tional education as any type of education that has as its distinctive 
purpose, a clear-cut distinctive purpose, the object of preparing our 


young people for vocational competency in some one line or field of |. © 


work. In other words, a system of training that would make a good 
physician, for instance, in almost all respects is vocational education, 
as is equally, a system of training that would make a good lawyer, on 
the vocational side. But in each case that part of the total educa- 
tion of each that is distinctive should be called vocational. Their com- 
mon underlying general education may well be the same. It seems to me 
that the vocational training of the physician is absolutely distinct from 
that of the lawyer. The training that will make a young man a good 
dentist and the other training that will make his brother, with the 
same general education, a good stenographer, are, of course, fundamen- 
tally alike. The training that would make, in training a pair of twins, 
one a good tailor and the other a good carpenter are, of course, you 
will readily see, distinct forms of training, simply because the occupa- 
tional life of our world has absolutely split itself up along these lines. 
No one of us in his waking moments would admit that the form of 
vocational education that made a man a good gardener, an effective 
producing gardener, would make him a good citizen. I agree entirely 
with what Professor Roman said of the need for better civic training, 
but of course, civic training is something again that must be largely 
common to all our training. We want substantially the same civic 
training for the dentist and the fireman and the gardener, although 
their occupational training is entirely distinctive and specialized. 
Furthermore, I don’t call that vocational education today—and re- 
member that we are absolutely overwhelmed with proposed substitutes. 
for genuine vocational education and other things that are said to be 
just as good and other schemes in which we play at ‘“‘make-believe,” at 
vocational education, or deal in imitations—I don’t call that vocational 


36 


education which does not have a conscious and intelligent relationship 
in its program of work, to the callings that men follow. It doesn’t 
follow at all that any vocational school, whether all day or part time, 
continuation or evening, is to give all of the training for vocations, 
but it seems to me that no other plan of training can be effective than 
that which consciously knows and organizes the degree and the kind 
and the phase of vocational education that it gives. 

For example, I can conceive of a school that would take persons 
who have already spent two years in the tailor’s education, or the 
teamster’s work or the dentist’s work, and would give him supplemen- 
tary training as we often do now in our evening classes; but of course, 
all of you who are connected with evening work realize perfectly well 
that that kind of vocational education can only be effective when it is 
related to the practical work that the man follows during his other 
working hours. If, on the other hand, we undertake to give a one or 
two years’ course initial to, or preparatory to, a trade, we can only 
make that effective by realizing and knowing what level in the trade 
we lift the person to; and in my estimation, more and more we must 
make arrangements with all of those employes and employers who con- - 
trol the conditions of apprenticeship, so that that stage can be recog- 
nized. 

Therefore, I am speaking of vocational education as something dis- 
_ tinctive. In all of my own thinking, I always set vocational education 
aside from that which I call general or what in the upper grades, at any 
rate, I prefer to call liberal education, which includes the training of 
the citizen. It is of the utmost importance in the growing, compli- 
cated civilization of this country, with all our problems, among the 
most acute of which are those of the relationship of different economic 
classes—it is of the utmost importance that we should steadily build 
a strong citizenship. But the present moment I am opposed to asking 
for more time for that in the schools, because I think that we make 
such very poor use of the time that we have. 

Now, I have just recently been set the task of analyzing the peda- 
gogic contributions of Boy Scout education at its best, and it happens 
that, having been a member of the Greater Boston Council, and having | 
had a boy of my own going through the various stages of it, I have 
some understanding of it, and I must confess that from the standpoint 
of character formation and training for citizenship, the Boy Scout 
organization, taking our boys from twelve to fourteen, does its work 
so much better for that limited class that it reaches than our public 
schools, that I feel that we have a great deal to learn there. 

During the years from twelve to fourteen, which we now claim by 


Oo” 


' 


right in all of our northern states, for full time school attendance, we 
have all children in school, even if they aren’t in the upper grades, and 
then substantially speaking today, we do obtain the time of about half 
of all of them from fourteen to sixteen. That is because they are com- 
ing voluntarily to our high schools in constantly increasing numbers. 
In that period, of course, we have a very precious time for civic educa- 
tion; and yet our means and methods and schools for these boys from 
twelve to sixteen are lamentably poor and weak and inefficient and 
puposeless for the last two grades of the elementary schools and the 
first two grades of the high school, as well as the lower grades for re- 
tarded pupils who are in the fourth and fifth grades when they are 
thirteen or fourteen years old. I hope that the coming of the junior 
high school is going to show us how we can bring about a more pur- 
poseful civic education in those years. 


You must remember that all through history the youth was re- 
garded as having attained to manhood at sixteen years of age, his 
preparatory stages having been largely completed at that time. 


Just a word in passing as to what we mean by democracy in edu- 
cation. Of course, we have had various definitions of democracy, but I 
think that the nearest we can come to it, so far as political democracy 
is concerned, is the provision of equal opportunity, as far as society 
operating in its collective capacity can do it, towards ensuring ~ 
equal opportunities before the law and for justice, for the 
participation in the suffrage, for the participation in the control of 
the government—an equal sharing in all of those opportunities 
that society collectively offers; and on the whole, we have produced 
the most democratic system of public education in the world, largely 
because it is free. Education in Europe is not free, and the tuition rates 
vary for different types of schools, making them in effect, class schools. 
We have not done that intentionally in this country. Our high school 
education is undemocratic in a degree, and that is that it offers so 
much more on the whole for those of the pupils who can probably go 
on to college and beyond, than it does to those who can probably not go 
on. Therein in our ignorance and in our inability to be inventive, I 
think we have been undemocratic. 


I always pity the lot of that very large number of American schol- 
ars who can spend only two years in high school, because it seems to 
me that we do feed them largely upon husks at the time when we 
ought to be feeding them a very nutritions diet in the line of making 
civic understanding and intelligence and insight and all of that; but 
when we think of an educational system as being contrived to offer op- 


—388 


portunities, as far as possible, to all alike, I think that we have 
achieved a large part of our ideal democracy. 

Now, while I have already said that our accepted public schools, the 
schools that we now have, are very democratic, it must be remembered 
that they are democratic, comparatively speaking, only from the 
standpoint of that common education which we are seeking to give to 
all, and that on the whole, taking our public and private schools to- 
gether our system of education is most undemocratic, in so far as it 
provides, as of course it intentionally provides, very meager opportuni- 
ties for vocational education. . 

What is the situation before two persons, John and James? John 
belongs to a large family of children and is the son of an artisan. James 
belongs to a’ smaller family and his father has an income of three or 
four thousand dollars a year, for which of course, James is not respon- 
sible, just exactly as John is not responsible for the other thing. John 
can only stay in school until he is fourteen or at most sixteen years of 
age, because at that time the burdens bowing the shoulders of his 
father are becoming pretty heavy, so John must enter upon occupa- 
tional life at, say sixteen years of age. 

Now, he has had to continue in the general schools, barring the 
posibility that he might have of getting such training in some of our 
cities in a commercial school, which is, up to that age, only quasi-voca- 
tional anyway So John must enter into employment at sixteen. Now, 
of course, if conditions were as they once were, John would find in the 
industry itself, all sorts of opportunities for being trained vocationally, 
but under modern conditions he enters into an industry that is, in a 
sense, speeded up. Every person is working for production and not 
for education, because education has always been only a by-product of 
- industry, and it is a by-product almost of necessity on the farm and in 
- the workshop and in the office; but once the time was when he could 
have been vocationally trained in his occupation. 

Now what happens? If, entering into some line of productive 
work, he can’t “steal a trade” if he isn’t capable of obtaining entirely 
by himself through his unaided efforts, proper vocational efficiency, 
presently he finds himself in the list of the “fired,” and he goes on to 
something else, but again he is fired and again and again until we find 
him at the age of twenty-two or twenty-three a more or less hardened 
and discouraged and cynical person, not interested in saving, not con- 
vinced that he is worth very much himself, the type of man that cer- 
tainly can not be regarded as a very good citizen. 

Take James. James, because of greater abundance of worldly 
goods possessed by his father, goes on through the high school. At 


39 


the close of high school, he finds all sorts of vocational schools open to 
him—an absolutely free state normal school, if he wants to be a teach- 
er; a school that charges some fee, if he wants to be a dentist or a phy- 
Sician or lawyer ; many free schools in the country if he wants to be an 
electrical engineer or navigator or a captain or some thing of that sort. 
If he wants to enter upon vocational preparation at sixteen years of 
age, he can complete a course in some commercial school and get at 
least a good deal of a start. There are all sorts of opportunities .open 
for him because he was able to stay longer, because he belonged to a 
rich family, or at least a richer family than John’s. 

“To them that hath, shall be given, and from them that hath not 
shall be taken away that which they have,” sometimes seems to me 
the motto upon which the historic oe ona education has been 
founded. 

The boy might go farther. He might join that select class that 
goes to West Point, and he would not only receive tuition free, but 
would receive board and room free of charge. He is a selected individ- 
ual. 


Now, my own feeling is very strong that the continuance of that 
. Situation is very undemocratic from the standpoint of vocational edu- 
cation and proficiency, and I believe that the dominating ideal back in 
the minds of a great many people today in accepting, to a certain 
extent, certain conditions of the social order as more or less enduring, 
(that is, it does not enter into the question of providing board and 
room and clothes for the boy of poor family) is that society ought to 
do more to help the boy or girl to get a start in life; but of course, 
always subsequent to the period of compulsory education—that period, 
I think, we must reserve for general education religiously. 

The persistence of the conditions which bring it about that half of 
our young people must enter upon industrial productive work at six- 
teen years or earlier, with no pieparation, in my estimation, constitutes 
a very distinct menace to democracy, because the results of the hiring 
and firing system, the results of the situation that a boy, for instance, 
at sixteen or seventeen starts out on a farm or in an Office, or a girl in 
her home, poorly prepared, having no mastery of productive work, are 
that incompetence is extended and perpetuated. 

Now, of course, we must proceed in recognition of facts that are 
more or less fixed. For example, we must hold that a family of from 
four to six children is the ideal family for American life. We must 
recognize that today more than half our people, much more than half 
our people, have incomes of less than twelve hundred dollars per year 
per family. We must interpret that in terms of the ability of the 


40) 


parent to prolong the education of his child as a non-producer or per- 
haps even as a burden on the side of clothing and food. We must 
recognize that our standards of living in America are improving. The 
ability of the average worker to keep his children longer in school is 
increasing all the time, as is manifested by the constantly rising at- 
tendance in our high schools; but nevertheless, somewhere about the 
age of sixteen, I think we must recognize for many years to come, 
as an embarking period of our young people in some form of productive 
work. | 

There is one other feature of our vocational education itself 
that I regard as being so ill advised, so unfortunate, that it alone 
makes our education undemocratic. We started a few years ago what 
we called day trade schools, and the programs of these day trade 
schools were usually, on paper, stated as being four years in length, 
because the historic American high school had a four-year course. 
Very few if any of our pupils completed a four-year course, but from 
that day to this, we have had a tendency, in organizing vocational 
schools, to build them on a sort of an abstract, theoretical basis with- 
out consideration of the conditions which exist today in productive 
work. 


We are today on the whole, per unit of population, the most pro- 
ductive people in the world, as Professor Roman has pointed out; 
partly due of course, to our unequalled resources, partly due to the 
great organizing ability of those who captain our industries, and partly 
due to the higher standards of living and the greater proficiency of our 
workers who do attain to any considerable degree of proficiency. We 
are, therefore, large producers, but in every industry in America today 
in which this dynamic condition of affairs exists, in which produc- 
tion is growing and in which standards of living of the workers are 
rising, in practically every one of those industries and in every one of 
those fields, the tendency is more and more towards specialization, as 
it is today in the legal and medical professions, and that is one of the 
conditions that gives us the maximum of productivity. 

For instance, in the manufacture of automobiles, we far surpass 
the rest of the world, and considering price and quality together, we 
at least equal the rest of the world, and yet from seventy to ninety per- 
cent of the people who do this work by no stretch of the imagination 
could be designated as machinists. They are specialty workers, piece 
workers, and their proficiency is high and they receive a high wage, 
(the wage of these is higher than that of all-around machinists unless 
these are put in positions of foremen or makers of jigs and fixtures). 
The wage of the specialist is generally high. The people who are manu- 


41 ; 


facturing shoes in Brockton today, and the other Massachusetts cities, 
are more highly paid than their predecessors, and with that they are 
steadily moving towards an eight-hour day, which gives them a long 
amount of time to offset the work. 

Now, we schoolmen, when we discuss this subject, find it exceed- 
ingly hard to get away from present conceptions, based upon what 
things were twenty or thirty or forty years ago, and that accounts, in 
my estimation, for a very large part of the distrust in which the prac- 
tical world of farmers and home-makere and office managers and in- 
dustrial managers hold our efforts to establish industrial schools, be- 
cause they think that we are old-fashioned, that we don’t know what 
has happened in the industries in the last twenty-five years, that we 
are not up-to-date, that we are basing our programs on historic things 
just exactly as tho absolutely pitiful programs of our liberal high 
schools are based upon dead mathematics, dead sciences, and the dead 
languages ; and that is the reason why the world distrusts us, because 
they see that we deal so much in the remote past, that in spite of all 
the great needs for better civic training and cultural training, we 
schoolmen face the past instead of facing the future. 

There are problems of American citizenship ahead—problems of 
military service and the struggles of labor and capital, and the need of 
better culture, and yet our educational programs are all based upon the 
history that happened prior to the nineteenth century, upon the science 
that was more or less finished before the end of the nineteenth cen- 
tury; upon the Latin and Greek languages, that are ancient and have 
the smell and flavor of ancient things about them. 

That is the feature of even our vocational education today, be- 
cause I know of trade schools that are absolutely operated on the 
principle that “to them that hath, shall be given; and from them that 
hath not, shall be taken that which they have.” It is right for a school, 
a school training for a given occupation, to eliminate those who mani- 
festly can not be qualified for that occupation, just as today we elim- 
inate ever so many people, we never let them get in sight of teaching 
or theology or law or medicine or engineering; we eliminate them long 
before they ever come up to this point, and it is all right to eliminate 
from a school for machinists, people whom we know can not become 
machinists ; but that does not justify us in saying that the only people 
who work with iron and steel in this world are people denominated ma- - 
chinists. If we want to be just and fair to the children, to help the 
children to find themselves and to qualify themselves, we must build a 
system of industrial and other kinds of vocational education based 
upon the conviction that every boy and every girl except the extremely 


42, 


feeble-minded, somewhere between the ages of fourteen and twenty- 
five, are going to work and they are going to find jobs, and the business 
of society, through a ramified system of industrial and other voca- 
tional schools, is to help them find themselves and to give them some 
preparation for it, even if itis only for a week or a month. 

I hold today that a three month’s course that fits a boy or a girl 
for a specialty is, in the sight of God and under democracy, as much 


entitled to your respect and consideration as a four years’ course that 
- fits for electrical engineering.. 


43 


DEMOCRACY AND INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 
WM. B. OWEN 


Principal of the Chicago Normal College 


Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: I suppose that my func- 
tion this afternoon is really to start something, that is, to start you to 
saying something, and really, I find it somewhat difficult to make the 
start. If I knew just which one of these papers I ought to discuss, or 
if I were free to choose which one I ought to discuss, I might easily 
start something, but I think I had better consider that I was put down 
to discuss the last paper rather than the one that was designated In- 
dustrial Preparedness and turned out to be a discussion on Military 
Preparedness. I would like to discuss military preparedness. 

Is industrial education a menace to democracy? That is a very 
difficult and perhaps impossible task for anybody to attempt to solve, 
but may I just offer two or three considerations? In the first place, 
the whole problem of modern education is a problem of the mainten- 
ance of democracy. We have never had a popular education until we 
began to have a democracy, and if there are any weaknesses in our 
modern education, and I suppose there are plenty of them, because 
every time an educator gets up he spends a good deal of his time tell- 
ing how weak it is—they admit it and they are experts—lI think if we 
admit all its weaknesses, we should have to recognize they are weak- 
nesses incidental to the attempt of democratic society to get control 
of and use the forces of society for the maintenance and furtherance 
of democracy. 

Democracy is a political thing. I don’t think there is any danger 
of our losing our political democracy in this country through embark- 
ing on a program of industrial education. I don’t think that anybody 
thinks that we are likely to lose our control through the right of suff- 
rage, etc. Democracy also is a form of industrial organization, and I 
should imagine that we have problems there that are tremendously 
important, that no society has worked out, and that are new because 
of our new form of industrial production, ete. 

Those problems, it seems to me I can say briefly, we are more 
likely to solve if we have an industrial form of education than we are 
through the maintenance of the present system. How are we going to 
have insight into forms of industry which is so complicated as our 


44 


present form of industry unless we educate people, to the use of the 
processes that are industry itself, and the people who are inside the 
industry are the people who are going to give us the largest contribu- 
tion towards the solution of this problem ofan industrial democracy. 

Then democracy is a form of social organization, and perhaps, be- 
ing a schoolman, that is a point that seems to me to be most vital in the 
whole situation. I should like to have been able to adopt Dr. Sneddden’s 
definition. After all, we want a kind of society in which the individual 
who is born into the world shall have the largest chance to give the 
most to the world and to get the most out of the world, and if we 
attempt to do that, it seems to me again that we have everything 
to gain and nothing to lose by a program of extending our present 
educational system so as to care for the industrial training of young 
people. | 

As Dr. Snedden has pointed out, the whole problem, if one can 
analyze so difficult a one by the use of two or three fundamental notions 
is due to the fact that until a very few years ago, the best place for a 
man to get his training for industry was in the industry itself, and that 
is why we never had the problem of industrial education in regard to 
our schools, because industry took care of that problem better than 
any school system could take care of it. Now with our machine- 
producing industry and the introduction of modern science, the two 
great factors that have changed industry radically, it is impossible for 

-a boy to go into an industry and become a master of it and maintain 
himself in it, and for that reason we have to use the school, and that is 
why we are turning to the school in order that we may give a boy such 
a training that when he comes into industry, he will not be swamped 
by it but will be the master of it. 

In our inherited school system—and I think that is a vital point— 
it is a fact that this liberal education of ours did contemplate taking 
care beyond the elementary school period of only ten to fifteen percent 
of our young people, and it never contemplated the education of the 
other eighty-five perecent. Now we have waked up to realize what 
seems to me to be a patent fact, that eighty-five percent of our young 
people are left without aduequate provisions for an education unless 
we expand our existing system so as to care for them and to care for 

_ them in the way that they can be best educated—and I don’t mean best 

from the standpoint of people that hire them, but I mean best from 
the standpoint of the people themselves. Let them be the judge of 
what they want. 

It is in the attempt to provide for these other eighty or eighty- 
five per cent that we in America are wrestling with the problem of 


A5 


giving them a new form of education that will put them (this eighty 
per cent) in the possession of the forces and in such self-possession 
that they can live out their lives in the most satisfactory way, just as 
in the past we have taken care of the ten or twenty per cent who have 
gone into the professions, and I don’t see how we can contemplate for a 
moment any possible danger in enlarging our institutions and our 
equipment for doing this work for eighty percent of the people of the 
country. 

How could that menace democracy? How could it do anything 
else but broaden it in every possible way? We have had about six, 
eight, ten years, perhaps ten years the country over—we have cer- 
tainly had in Illinois five or six years—of constant discussion of the 
trend of this movement. I think we know pretty well the general 
trend of the situation. I think we know in a broad and general way 
the problems that we have to deal with. I think we know very little 
about the specific working out of many problems, because we have done 
so little, but what we need to do is to get a broad view of the general 
problem and then get enough money and enough trained intelligence 
and consecration and devotionand enough backing from the people, both 
by law and public support and every other way, that will permit us 
to go ahead on the program that was suggested by Dr. Snedden in his 
closing sentence, and find out when and where and how we can do this 
in the best possible way. We have had centuries of experimenting in 
how to train a boy to be a lawyer or a doctor or a minister or a writer, 
and we have had mighty few years to train him to enter into industry 
and the arts. We will have to make up for that lost time, if it may be - 
considered as lost time, and we want to adopt a rational experimental - 
method which means merely this, that we are willing to experiment 
and that we have confidence in ourselves and in our intelligence, and 
that we can go ahead and try something, and if it doesn’t succeed, we 
can back out and try again. 

So far as democracy is concerned, I can not believe that so long as 
we enlarge means, intelligence and control over the world of affairs and 
the world of nature, we are going to lose the gain that we have 
achieved through these past centuries. 

THE CHAIRMAN: No program of this sort would be complete, 
in fact, it would be incomplete if we didn’t hear from our old friend, 
President Harvey of Menomonie Institute, that is, the Stout Institute. 
We will call on Dr. Harvey. 

DR. HARVEY: Mr. Chairman, I am drafted. I am ae a volun- 
teer, aS your command indicates. I have very little to say except that 
I want to commend the statement of Dr. Snedden in which he indicated 


46 6 


the great necessity in vocational education of a clean-cut, definite, well 
organized idea of what was demanded in the education of the individ- 
ual to make him effective in his vocation, and of the further work in 
organizing that for instructional purposes. 

I want to commend equally his attitude, as I understand it, that 
for those things which are not distinctly vocational but which he clas- 
sified as belonging to the liberal education, but just as essential for 
this individual as for any other, there should be the same necessity for 
careful, definite, well organized concepts of what is essential for the 
individual in this phase of education. 

And then I want to go one step further and suggest this, that for 
the large number of these people whom we are considering today in 
the field of industrial vocational education, whose school work will be 
confined to the industrial school, the necessity of combining in the 
industrial school organization, both types of work, the type which 
means that clean-cut, definite purpose to develop vocational efficiency, 
and the type which means to supplement that in this school, which 


being. We can’t separate these things fan these Rennie they must go 
together. 

I believe we have yet some things to learn in this country in the 
way of production. In our great new country, with its fertile soil, we 
find the average yield of wheat about fourteen bushels per acre, while 
over in England and in Germany and in France, on land that has been 
cropped hundreds of years, it runs from twenty-three to thirty-five 
bushels per acre. We have something to learn yet in the way of pro- 
duction. I note today in the paper that the United States has gone to 
England with a contract of three and a quarter million dollars for the 
production of shells at a price of two hundred dollars apiece less than 
they can be produced in this country, and the bidders in this country 
tell the reason why they are unable to produce them. 

We have some things yet to do in the development of the produc- 
tive industries of this country. I have no fear as the last speaker said, 
that anything which developes the intelligence of the individual—and 
I care not where he may be, whether he be the worker in the factory or 
the worker in the profession—anything which develops his intelli- 
gence, his conscience, his love of fair dealing, will injure democracy or 
is a menace to democracy. If we have a democracy that is endangered 
by that sort of education, the quicker we get rid of it and substitute 
something else for it, the better. 

THE CHAIRMAN: I wish to introduce now Mr. Weld, Director of 
the Pullman Manual Training School. 


AT 


MR. WELD: Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: This is 
rather a surprise to me, as I had no notion of being called for today ; 
but the educational problem is not a new one to me. I have been en- 
gaged in it all my life. I think there is no one in this room that can 
claim a wider range in experience in educational matters than myself. 
I have filled every sort of position, practically, from a teacher in grade 
schools to the deanship of a graduating college and the directorship of 
en engineering school, so that the problem is not a new one to me. 

I took up the question of vocational education as it presents itself 
in the Pullman institution as an educational problem, and I believe it 
to be as truly an educational problem as the university course. Time 
and again, I have had teachers recommended to me for employment 
in our institution on the basis of settlement work which they had been > 
doing or other philanthropic work—all educational work is philan- 
thropic, but I do not consider that the work which we are undertaking 
at Pullman is in any sense philanthropic or settlement work any more 
than the University of Chicago. 

One thing that we need to learn in regard to vocational education 
is that it is a serious educational proposition, just as much so as engin- 
eering education or any other line of technical education. The man 
who can cut out a milling machine gearing such as is required in many 
of our modern machines, must have just as much skill and intelligence 
as a man who can perform a surgical operation, and he needs as careful 
and as detailed a training. 

One of the things that the industrial educators must keep in mind, 
too, is the need of a liberal education in association with industrial edu- 
cation. If the industrially trained man is to realize his greatest oppor- 
tunities, his greatest possibilities, he must be backed by a liberal edu- 
cation. He must know the English language. He must appreciate its 
literature. He must know something of the history of this country 
and of the political institutions of its people. He must be a man of 
scholarship, not necessarily academic scholarship in the ordinary sense 
of the word, but he must be a man of intelligence, of developed and 
ripe intelligence. 

There is another point of view. Labor has attained a fair degree 
of remuneration and the laboring man has secured for himself a fair 
amount of time at his own disposal, a fair amount of leisure. Nothing 
gives better index to the character of a man or the type of his manhood 
than the manner in which he employs his leisure time. How is the 
laboring man going to employ his leisure time? The way in which he 
does employ his leisure time largely determines the difference between 
himself and the professional man, between the social status of the two. 


48 


If the laboring man has a high degree of intelligence, an intelligence 
which enables him to appreciate good reading, grand opera and all the 
other good things of this life to which he is able to attain, there is no 
reason whatever why the machinist or the pattern-maker may not 
stand as high on the social scale as the physician or the lawyer. That 
is where he belongs, and he is gradually through the medium of in- 
dustrial education, through the medium of such schools as are now 
being established, he is gradually to attain this standard. The time 
was when the doctor was not ranked high in social position. I have 
nothing against the barber, but the doctor was ranked with the barber, 
in fact, he was a barber. 

I presume that you would like, since I have been called upon, to 
have me say a word or two in regard to the policy which is being 
carried out at Puilman in the Pullman Free School of Manual Training. 
This school was endowed years ago by George M. Pullman, of the great 
Pullman Company. It is only within a little over a year that the school 
_ has opened its doors to students. Our plan is to receive students who 
have graduated from the eighth grade. That is not an absolutely rigid 
requirement, but ninety-nine per cent of our students fulfill that re: 
quirement today. They are then given a variety of work for two years, 
which I suppose can be described in a certain way as prevocational. I 
heard that term discussed here today in a way which pleased me and 
satisfied me very much. 3 

The work is general. The student is finding himself. At the 
same time, we hope that he is finding out a good many things that he 
ought to know, whatever he does. He is working in the pattern shop or 
the woodworking shop in general. He is working in the blacksmith 
shop, in the machine shop, to a limited extent, and also in the iron 
foundry. He will have a general survey of these branches of work 
during the first two years of his course. At the same time he is em- 
phasizing mathematics and drawing from the vocational standpoint. 
He is in the drawing room or the scientific laboratory, elementary 
scientific laboratory, every day for two hours, and in addition to that 
he is taking a full proportion of work in English and history. The 
school day is eight hours in length, from eight to twelve and from 
twelve-forty to four-thirty. 

Young men take courses in domestic arts and sciences. Their 
schedule is full through the day. Our class work is done in long ses- 
sions. We have followed so far the method of supervised study. The 
study period and the recitation period are combined into one long 
period. I do not like to boast of the results, at any rate this early in 
the experiment, for We are in a certain sense, in the experimental stage 


AQ 


so far, but we find that the eight-hour day is no hardship to our stu- 
dents. They are in no hurry to go home. They show no impatience to 
gohome. Neither is the fact that we keep school for forty-eight weeks 
in the year a handicap in any way. We saw last summer, the only 
summer in which it has been tried, no tendency for the students to 
leave the school. They didn’t seem to care for the vacation at all. 
They came right along to the school just as a matter of course. 

I don’t think that we have tried anything new at Pullman. Il 
know the ideas have not been new to me. They have been ideas that I 
have heard of for many years, but we have had a singularly free oppor- 
tunity there to put into operation certain things that I believe school- 
men in general believe in, and they are working out with a fair degree 
of success. I do not know, of course what the future of the experiment 
may bring forth, but so far we are in a very happy frame of mind over 
the situation which we have at Pullman; and I thank you for this op- 
portunity of meeting you and hope to meet you further. 

THE CHAIRMAN: Weare very grateful to Director Weld for 
telling us of the plans and purpose of this school. It is bound to take 
its place in the educational life of the city. It is a free school. 


THE DOUBLE PROBLEM OF VOCATIONAL 
EDUCATION FOR WOMEN 


DR, DAVID SNEDDEN 


Professor of Vocational Education, Teachers College, 


Columbia University 


DR. SNEDDEN: Madam Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: Some 
_ four or five years ago, when I was trying to perfect some of my socio- 
logical studies, a very wise sociological teacher in this country accused 
me and all my brethern and sisters in our profession, of not having 
reached the stage where we could think statistically. He said that in 
education, all his experience was that we always thought in terms of 
individual cases and that we had not reached the point where we knew 
how to manipulate knowledge on a statistical basis; and he said that 
social knowledge, at any rate, can never become scientific, that it is 
quite impossible to talk of it as being scientific, until you know how to 
talk in terms of statistical quantities. 

Now, because I am going to try desperately to-night to talk, in a 
way, in terms of statistical quantities, I wan't to forewarn you that 
when I do speak in terms of a certain quantity, I recognize perfectly 
that there are a great many individual cases that lie outside of the 
quantity on which I base my generalization. 

We are to talk about the vocational education of women and girls. 
Vocational education for me denotes and connotes something very dis- 
tinct, very different from general or liberal education, and when we 
face the question of vocational education for girls and women, if we 
are to think statistically, it is essential that we should have before us 
what are the prevailing numbers of those about whom we are talking. 
In fact, it is important that we should realize what the statistician 
calls the modal quantity, the modal number. 

You all know that the large majority of girls and women do not go 
to college. That very small minority who do go to college are very im- 
portant, probably of far greater importance than is indicated by their 
numbers, but nevertheless, in point of numbers, they are a small mi- 
nority. Not half the girls of the United States, nor a third, graduate 
from the high schools, so the graduates ofthe high schools constitute 
again a minority, not a majority, not a modal quantity. About half the 
people of the United States live in urban communities. If we-are to 
generalize about the education of girls and women, the probablities are 


51 


that we should also make a rather sharp distinction between the girl 
or woman living in the rural communities and the girl or woman living 
in the urban communities. 

Iam not at all clear yet on a good many points connected with the 
girl living in the rural communities, because her condition is in a state 
of considerable transition, but there are certain facts connected with 
the lives and work of girls and women in our urban communities ‘today 
that are matters of more or less complete statistical knowledge. Of the 
girls living in urban communities orvillage communties, it is true today 
that the large majority of them, the modal number, in point of num- 
bers again, come from fairly large families—four, five, six children in 
the family. I recognize that there are many families in the United 
States with no children, many more with one child or two children, but 
those families I am leaving out of account tonight in my attempt to 
generalize, because the large majority of the girls and women with 
whom we deal are themselves the offspring of families having four, 
five, six or more children—the normal family group, not abnormal ~ 
family group. We may think, of course, of a family of fifteen children 
as being a rare type, at one extreme of our curve of numbers, and the 
type of family that has no children or one or two children, even though 
they are wage-earners, as being at the other extreme. They do not 
count as modal quantities. 

Now again, taking the girls that come from these larger families, 
it is true that the large majority of them, the modal quantity, come 
from families in which the income of the family is not large. I recog- 
nize that there are some families that have an income of three thou- 
sand, or five thousand, or fifty thousand dollars a year, but they are 
uncommon. The great bulk of American families have a family in- 
come ranging from nine hundred to fifteen hundred dollars—the type 
of family spoken of, four to six children. 

So again speaking in terms of modal quantities, common quanti- 
ties, big quantities, major quantities, the girls from these wage-earn- 
ing families—and of course, it is needless to say that this type of 
family is not a servant-keeping family—the girls from this type of 
family do go out to work for wages rather early. We say rather early 
—rather late would be just as correct to describe it, because it is later - 
now than it used to be. It used to be earlier in years; at least, when 
they continued their work in the home, but of course, we are all familar 
with the now oft repeated statement that modern industrial develop- 
ments, which naturally have affected the village and city most, have 
brought it about that where there are two, three or four females in the 
family of working age, from fourteen years up, some of those will 


52 


have to go away from the home to work, from the city or urban home, 
if they are to be kept busy, and so these girls leave the home; and that 
is one of the commonest and yet, I think, one of the least interpreted 
of the social phenomena of our day. : 

You can see this phenomena objectively illustrated in the vicinity 
of any town or city when you take a car early in the morning or late in 
the evening. I have sometimes wished, as I said yesterday to the 
Woman’s Club, that some epic. writer would rise big enough to lay 
before us this picture of millions of girls, little girls, untrained girls, 
going away from the home in the early hours of the morning, coming 
back late at night; going off to work in environments and under condi- 
tions of which their, parents don’t dream, and on the whole, the re- 
markable success, all things considered, that follows their efforts. 

I remember taking a very early morning train out of Boston some 
two or three years ago, that I had to take in order to make certain 
connections, passing through the town of Waltham ,the great watch 
manufacturing town, just as the dawn was breaking on a winter morn- 
ing, six or seven o’clock, or half-past six, with a gray darkness still 
hanging over things; and as the train sped through the streets, as far 
as I could see were literally hundreds of little girls hurrying onward to 
the great watch factories, there to make the watches that you and I 
wear. Of course, they were working a fifty-four-hour week and they 
‘had to get to work, probably, at seven o’clock, but coming as some of 
them did, walking for many blocks, naturally an earlier start was 
necessary. 

That typifies what is happening in all our industrial and commer- 
cial communities over the United States. In our department and 
other stores we are being more and more waited upon by these people 
who range from fourteen-year-old girls to young women; so the wage- 
earning careers of these young women constitute one of the modal 
facts. 

Another fact is that the large majority of these young women 
who thus go out to work, the great majority of them, the modal quan- 
tities of them, will turn back after four, five, six, seven or eight years 
of wage-earning careers, either in teaching or clerking or stenography 
or working in a factory—they will turn back and become home-makers 
themselves. They will marry, try to build up a home, and try on the 
whole to avoid wage-earning. The large majority of them will have 
children. They will try to rear those children to manhood and woman- 
hood again, repeating the cycle, in large degree, of their fathers and 
mothers. Most of them, the modal quantities, will carry on all the 
responsibilities of home without the help of servants, and they, in turn, 


53 


will have not quite so many children, statiscally, as their fathers and 
mothers; but on the part of all of those who are really to contribute to 
the permanent upbuilding of American society, they will have from 
tour to six children, or the particular race or stock that does not, will, 
of course, be one of the expiring races. That is one of the cold facts 
of statistical science that none of us can avoid. : 

So much for the background of this topic that I have under discus- 
sion tonight. Now, one other point, as preliminary: Of course, in dis- 
cussing any problem of any type of education or social condition, if we 
care to, itis perfectly possible for us to build castles in Spain. I am to 
some extent myself a builder of castles in Spain. When I have nothing - 
else to do, I like to dream about things as they might be, or perhaps 
dream about things as they ought to be. But building castles in Spain 
is a different work from building castles on the earth; so different that 
we should know when and where we are building castles, and for the 
purpose of my talk tonight, I want us to remember that I am building 
my castles on the earth, to this extent, that 1am assuming that for the 
next generation, at any rate, certain of the conditions that now prevail 
in society will continue; in other words, for example, society will 
not evolve to the state where it is going to contribute financial support 
to the rearing of children; it will continue to leave that to the parents. 

I know there are those who think that the state ought to endow. 
motherhood, which of course would change the whole economic status — 
of the family, but whatever that kind of a proposal may encounter in 
the way of fate some years hence, I don’t look upon it as being within 
our generation a practical proposal for the United States, so I leave it 
out and I assume, therefore, that during your generation and mine, 
which we are talking about tonight, the families of the country are 
going to rear their own children; that, while they will get free educa- 
tion for those children in the public schools, the family will have to 
provide for the food and clothing and shelter in each case. | 

We may say, of course, that this ought not to be so. We might 
have our dreams or our visions of a very different state of affairs, and 
it is possible that a very different state of affairs may come very sud- 
denly, because the world apparently has reached the stage where cata- 
clysmic social changes are not as uncommon as they used to be. 

There is another point, and that is that while on the economic side, 
society will continue for some years to come to leave the rearing and 
support of children to the parents, on the side of educational fitting of 
the children for life, society is going to follow less and less the lais- 
sez-faire policy, the let-alone policy. Society is going to take that 
whole matter more completely in charge and extend education a good 


o4 


deal; and I would like to discuss this problem of the dual education of 
girls. First, of course, is the vocational education for the wage-earn- 
ing calling, and next, the vocational education for the home-making 
calling which comes later. 

I am going to discuss this problem on the assumption that we are 
moving rather rapidly towards a very considerable enlargement of the 
functions and the scope of public education, that the public is more 
and more willing to support this education, and that consequently it is 
that the education itself shall be efficient education, shall be an effec- 
tive education; effective, I mean, in realizing any particular purpose 
that we have in mind, whether that be teaching of laws of health or 
teaching ideals and standards of culture or civic responsibility or 
vocational efficiency. 

I have long ago ceased to use any single word to describe the pur- 
pose of education, because education must be interpreted more and 
more in terms of a multiplicity of purposes, and many of these pur- 
poses are very much unlike each other, and yet every one is comple- 
mentary to each other, just as the different elements in this building 
in which we are tonight are conmplementary to each other, altho all the 
conditions of producing these different elements differed greatly the 
- one from the other. 

We are today in a primitive stage in regards vocational education, 
and J think the more frankly we admit this, the better. We are ina 
majority of cases, in what might be called the stage of faiths. We 
have a lot of faiths, and of course, faiths are sometimes prejudices, 
because a prejudice is a kind of a faith. Coupled with that, we have a 
certain experimental mindedness; we have a feeling that we are trying 
things to a certain extent, but after all, the bulk of us are coming into 
the field with faiths, and every particular profession or calling or cult 
that approaches these social questions brings with it, trailing after it, 
a series of its prejudices and cult faiths. If you ask the social worker 
about the education of girls, you will discover there a set of preposses- 
sions, some of which are wrong and some right; if you ask the school 
teacher, you are going to find there also a large series of preposses- 
sions, some of which are right and some of which are not right. 

Of course, we have made a great advance when we have reached 
the stage where we admit that even some of our most cherished be- 
liefs may be wrong, may have the elements of falsity ; and it may be 
that we have developed and that we hold them in violence of facts if 
we dared assert the facts. 

So we have today back of us a long tradition, in the case of girls 
and women, of struggle for what might be called rights to education— 


55 


a very long struggle that has left certain conditions in its wake. I 
spoke to the Woman’s Club yesterday and referred to the fact that the 
programs of collegiate education fof women show very many distinct 
signs of retardation. They are behind the men’s programs very con- 
siderably, and there has been less pressure for their change. So if we 
take certain of the typical woman’s colleges in the United States, I 
think we could find in them evidences of archaic educational practices, 
both in admission of applicants and in the practices and requirements 
imposed in the school itself. | 

Of course, in the high school our girls, on the whole, by virtue 
again of age-long traditions, are probably more submissive than boys. 
They throng our high schools in larger numbers than boys do, and they 
probably are more liable to accept the stated things than are the boys. 

One other word finally: I feel, as I stated this afternoon, that we 
must steadily improve the general or liberal education that we offer to 
our young people in America. We must make the fullest possible use 
of the period now commonly allotted to compulsory school attendance. 
but we must be very careful in doing so to take cognizance of the 
standards of family life and the burden that the family must carry, 
before we go too far. 

But whether we do or not, we must take this period for training . 
towards citizenship, towards personal culture, towards all that general 
knowledge and appreciation which we so much need. I have stated 
many times, and I have really had the position controverted very ser- 
iously, that our American education, by and large, for our children 
between the ages of twelve and sixteen, the last two grades in the 
elementary grades and the first two years in high school—that by and 
large, that education offered to our children between twelve and six- 
teen is the poorest education that we offer, the most deficient in vital- 
ity. The first two years of the high school particularly, for that 
constantly increasing number of children who want a couple of years 
of high school education before they leave school entirely. The last 
two years of the high school education for the diminished number of 
those who remain, is I think, more fruitful; but for the large number 
who leave us on or before the sixteenth birthday, our general educa- 
tion is far, far from meeting the needs of an age in which our cultural 
problems are so great as they are at the present time. 

Now, on the other hand, I feel just as confident that we can not 
effectively mix vocational education and liberal education at the same 
time and place. That is simply a matter of efficiency. If we could mix 
vocational and general education ideally, there would be a good deal to 
be said for it, but in practical life we never can. When people go to 


56 


work, in practical life, they go to work a stated number of hours and 
‘then all of their cultural life, their civic life, their leisure life, their 
recreational life, lies outside of their working hours. That has been 
an age-long condition; it goes back very far indeed. On the other 
hand, people living in the tropics or people characterized bya sort of 
economic “don’t care” attitude, do mix play and work, but wherever 
we have productive efficiency, people dare not mix work and play. 

Iam, on the basis of considerable experience, absolutely convinced 
that we can not mix liberal and general education and vocational educa- 
tion within the same day and period except at a very serious sacrifice 
of both. In fact, I don’t believe we have any so-called vocational school 
in the United States that could be characterized as fifty per cent effi- 
cient where that is being done. Such schools, in my estimation, are 
very ineffective contrasted with what might be a much better type of 
school, that has a concentrated program, that drives straight at one 
task and really accomplishes something. I am completely opposed to 
bringing in anything like vocational education within the present 
period of compulsory education, because, in my estimation, that is 
going to defeat the purpose of our general education. 

Well, I think I will not enter into this other line. It is too long a 
story, but let me pass on to consider these modal quantities of young 
people who are going to work, wage-earning work. Let me take two or 
three assumptions. In the first place, let’s assume that the period 
alloted to vocational education lies outside of compulsory education or 
the compulsory age period, as I think is found in every state where 
they made legislation on this subject, that vocational school attendance 
within the compulsory period is not recognized as permissible, and 
consequently the period devoted to vocational training lies outside. 

Let me make another assumption. That is, in providing for the 
liberal education of girls and young women at any stage, we can pro- 
fitably introduce a moderate amount of household arts or home eco- 
nomics or any of the related subjects; we can introduce a moderate 
amount of that on the basis of from two to four hours a week, as an 
element of their general or liberal education. My own conviction is 
growing increasingly strong that work introduced on that basis, if 
merged with algebra and history and English, does not function voca- 
tionally more than in a very slight, negligible degree, but that with a 
slight change of emphasis, it can be made to contribute to the develop- 
ment of the taste and insight and breadth of vision of what a home 
should be or what a young woman’s work should be, or what are the 
possibilities there that can be made to function through, as liberal 
education. a 


57 


Now, you see that I am defining liberal education in terms of 
breadth of vision and ideals and insight and taste; and I regard the 
things that we offer now to young girls between twelve and sixteen—I 
regard most of that as a mere mockery of liberal education. It isn’t 
liberalizing, and I believe the public is justified in protesting against a 
great deal of the work we do now in the general schools, especially for 
pupils of these ages, because I think the education of our young chil- 
dren from six to eleven or twelve is vastly better in general but that 
the work in this period is not liberalizing and that accounts for the 
great willingness of children to forego Ts 

Recognizing now that we have these thousands and thousands of 
girls and their family conditions and their economic conditions and 
their progression towards matrimony and home-making, let us as- 
sume that society is big enough and broad enough to provide general 
vocational education for them, of what would that consist? 

We introduced a phrase a few years ago, when we were aspiring 
for vocational education, that I found we can’t use. We spoke about 
“dead-end” occupations or “blind-alley” occupations. Now in the 
modern economic conditions, those words are misnomers absolutely, 
except in the so rare and few instances that they are not worthy of 
consideration. What we have in this great order of things, where all 
of those thousands and literally millions of girls are going to work, 
what we have, are distinctly juvenile occupations. For both the 
boys and girls have juvenile occupations, and often very good wages 
are paid in them. Doffer girls and boys in the textile mills get five or 
six dollars a week. The age at which these people pass from juvenile 
occupations to adult occupations varies from eighteen to twenty years. 
You notice I am not using the word “trade,” because we might as well 
recognize that in the historic sense of the word, “trade” is becoming as - 
extinct as the dodo. Let us talk of ocupations; let us talk of millions 
of people who are doing productive work, producing by the labor of 
hands and brains what you and I consume. 

The age is eighteen or nineteen or twenty or upwards at which 
people enter upon adult occupations. Now, these little girls in their 
millions who do these juvenile lines of work, are not in very large mea- 
sure, performing a juvenile work, that is preparatory to higher stages 
of work. That is simply one of the conditions of the modern special- 
ization of industry, we here must recognize the play of economic forces 
that are absolutely beyond your control or society’s control today. 
This division and specialization of labor means that the task that a 
person performs as a juvenile may not have any connection with the 
task that one ought to perform as an adult. 


58 


What does that mean in terms of an educational program for girls 
and women? Why, it simply means this, that when the girl has 
reached the stage where pressure in the home, her desire to lessen the 
burden of her support, makes her feel that she ought to become a 
wage-earner, at least to the extent of being self-maintaining, society 
ought to prepare her for that work as a juvenile—or a boy in the same 
way. Society should give some prepration—it may be very short, very 
specific, concrete and helpful; and then when, two or three or four 
years later, the girl has begun to emerge into womanhood, ready now 
for an adult wage-earning occupation, again society should provide a 
period of specifice training, definite, concrete, and useful, for a special 
field again; and when, perhaps four or five years later, the girl, now a 
young woman, has reached the stage where she is to pass into that last 
and longest career for her, in many cases, that of the home-maker, 
society should again prepare her for that or for the opportunity for it. 

You and I may say, out of our preconceptions, “Why, she won’t 
take advantage of those opportunities.” I wonder how we know. We 
have never tried it. We have never offered anything efficient. We 
have offered imitations and substitutes, but never the real thing. As 
a matter of fact, it would be a great deal more profitable for us to set 
ourselves to the task of creating ideals for this sort of thing, and we 
know that it doesn’t take long to make education fashionabie. Why 
are so many girls studying Latin and algebra at the present time, 
twenty per cent, almost, more than boys? The thing has become fash- 
ionable. They don’t know there is any education or profit in it, but 
it has become the accepted thing. We could make anything else the 
accepted thing. 

But what are some of the complications of this program? One of 
them is this, that if we are going to have vocational education in any 
period in the intersts of effectiveness, in the interests of fair play and 
justice, too, let’s make it one hundred per cent vocational education 
and not a diluted substitute, something denatured; something that 
always reminds me of that old adage, that rings in my ears: ‘Mother, 
may I go out toswim? Yes, my darling daughter. Hang your clothes 
on a hickory limb, but don’t go near the water.” We are trying to get 
a good deal of vocational education without going near the water. We 
want to learn to swim but we don’t want to go near the water. 

Now, we are not going to learn to swim without going near the 
water, and there are a great many of us today who are keeping as far 
away from the water as we dare without losing our jobs. If we are 
going to have vocational edcation, let us remember this, that the world 
of enterprise has split productive work into literally thousands of 


59 


channels, that. efficiency i in any one of those channels, and productive 
capacity, is a matter of training. 

How many of these girls do we have to consider. Do you know 
that there are from five to six hundred a month passing in a stream 
right out of your own schools in Chicago—five to six hundred a month 
in Chicago? I have taken the trouble to deduce that from the school 
stastistics of this city. They are going out in a steady procession, 
leaving the schools behind them absolutely and going into wage-earn- 
ing callings. 

What happens? We have given them no training for the voca- 
tional field. We may have given them a little touch of something, but 
the bulk of them, the modal quantities, have had no preparation. I 
am not talking about the ones that remain to seventeen or eighteen 
years of age. Those are the elite, but the others—we have given them 
very little. They have got to fit in or not fit in, with nobody to teach 
them, under the pressure of our modern industrial production, because 
industry isn’t organized to educate, it is organized to produce. The 
men in charge of it aren’t responsible for education. You and I, as 
consumers, are more responsible, probably. 

These girls go into the industrial world. Many of them, to their 
credit, fit in well, but it isn’t an economical situation even at its best. 
The whole trend of my argument leads up to this point. If we are 
going to offer vocational education, more and more we must offer it in 
what might be called short unit courses, specific, intensive, very pur- 
poseful, very much linked up with the occupational field, and of course, 
for many years to come, all that we can do is to offer these openings. 
We shall not compel people to choose this, that or the other. The time 
may come when in a large city offering a great variety of opportunities 
for vocational education for girls, we shall say to a certain girl who 
chooses or elects none of these offered openings, “‘Well, you have 
chosen none of all of these chances you have had. You must go in 
here.’ But when that time comes, which will be a good many years 
hence, we shall find that ninety per cent of our girls, at any rate, will 
easily elect the chances for vocational training that are presented to 
them. 

At the present time, you and I can’t talk about vocational educa- 
tion for the wage-earning callings of girls except in terms of just two 
or three occupations below the levels of the professions. Teaching, of 
course, and nursing, I rank as the professions, and there we deal with 
people who don’t enter upon the slow training until they have prac- 
tically reached maturity. The next stage below that, the great profit- 
able one, is stenography, and there we encounter a certain selection 


60 


and maturity also, and of course, it requires a considerable period of 
training. 

But below that, we do practically nothing today. We are begin- 
ning to talk a little about training girls for the salesgirl’s position. We 
do nothing else except in those two historic occupations of dressmak-. 
ing and millinery, both of which are dying trades and are disappearing, 
and both of which are in many cities almost non-existent. And yet, in 
the face of all this, we don’t raise our eyes often enough to see that , 
girls are going in a perfect army into work. They are doing ordinary 
salesmanship now and ten thousand other things, and I suppose within 
a few years we shall have them manufacturing shells and cannons, in 
imitation of England, because they can do it. They make very good 
machine-tenders, and the bulk of the world’s work is being done by 
machine-tenders, from the man who sits on a cultivator on the farm to 
the weaver of cloth in a mill in Massachusettes, who is controlling be- 
side twelve thousand dollars worth of machinery. 

What is the use of our talking about handcraft production? It is’ 
dead. It is dying, at least, and the bulk of the world’s work is being 
done by machinery, that work which produces exchangeable goods in 
quantities, and quality, too, if you please. Many of the lines of this 
highest and most complicated machine production today in steel and 
iron and brass and fabrics and leather are so much finer than hand- 
eraft was ever able to produce that they don’t stand in comparison at 
all. The world’s work is being done in that way, from the man who, 
on a locomotive, pulls a train weighing perhaps a thousand tons, carry- 
ing precious freightage, simply pulling a few levers, to the girl back 
in those weaving mills, operating machinery worth twelve thousand 
dollars. 

And yet you and I, as old-fashioned pedagogs, talk contemptuously 
of machine-tending. Why ladies and gentlemen, the work of the world 
is being done by the machine-tender, and it is the most modern eco- 
nomic order, and what is the use of our sticking our heads in the sand 
like ostriches and refusing to face the facts, There is such a thing 
ahead of uS as a diversified program of vocational training, where one 
month given to the girl at the proper stage of her life, intensive, eight 
hours a day practically, correctly, will save that girl years of misery 
in her later work—save her health, her nerves, her morals, and yet you 
and I today are refusing to face that kind of a fact. 

We want thousands of forms of short units, specific, eight-hour-a- 
day vocational training. I hear people say that no program, devoid of 
elements of liberal education, will succeed. Why should we try all of 
the time to smuggle thatin? Why can’t we give our people the oppor- 


61 


runity to have this training for two months, or one month, rightly ed- 
justed and directed and made concrete, at the right time? And yet 
we are talking today in terms of vocational courses of two or three or 
four years in length; and then we have this vague notion that you can 
_ Start out away back at the beginning of things and you can fit the 
person for any or all contingencies that may come along later in life, a 
scheme absolutely contrary to the social order. 

We are talking today as though that pitiful—from the vocational 
point of view, not from the liberal point of view—that pitiful amount 
of household arts that we are able to give the girls in regular schools 
would fit them in the distant future for home-making, as though little 
girls, not yet with any motives ripe, could take work. Why do we 
assume that we have got to close the chapter and bang the leaves of 
the book together in closing all their school education before we can 
let these people go? 

Why, the education of tomorrow is going to be a system so organ- 
ized that people will be coming back constantly. I spoke of juvenile 
occupations. Give this little girl who is trying to carry her burden of 
the family’s support, give her a start of one month, two months, three 
months, to fit for that occupation out there that you know is an occupa- 
tion, that you know pays a wage, that you know is always demanding 
service fit for it. | 

You say that you can’t see how we can fit her for it. That is only 
our ignorance. Give the girl three months of training for that. Make 
it clear to that girl, when she has passed her juvenile period, that she 
ean come back and we will give her three months of training in order to 
prepare her for a higher level; and then she can continue by evening or 
continuation or extension courses, or perhaps for a solid period in a 
dull season—she can come back later on and get more equipment, 
until finally we come to that last great opportunity that we will offer, 
either just prior to her marriage or after it, when we can say to the 
girl, out of our social work, “The standard of the right kind of a 
woman home-maker is thus and so. You are about to enter upon the 
work and here is what we can offer you.” Make it definite, practical, 
positive ; adjust it to her conditions. We can do that. 

Now, don’t misunderstand me on this point. I want to see our 
schools offer home-making training on a home-making basis also to 
girls of fourteen to sixteen, for example, and I hope that we shall 
develop some of that through the operation of the Smith-Hughes Bill, 
because there will be a certain proportion of girls who will want to 
equip at that age themselves. Some of these girls, for instance, will 
be the girls in artisan’s families, where there is only one girl in the 


62 


family, and the artisan himself in the family will be equal to the task 
of keeping the girl at home. Some of these girls will be in wealthier 
families, and so we shall find a certain small per cent of them, ten or 
twenty per cent; but don’t let us assume that the eighty per cent is 
there. It is too early; it isn’t time, and remember that there isn’t any 
effective vocational education without a strong co-operative motive on 
the part of the learner. Then there will be many young women who, 
having finished their general education in the high school, or two years 
of it, will turn to the home-making school. Now, that home-making 
school, again, must be positive, direct, concentrated. No, two or three 
hours a day is going to do anything but waste the public’s money. 

I have spoken of short course vocational training, but that is by no 
means the end of the story. In fact, for many occupations, I am sure 
that just over the way tomorrow we shall develop a system of part 
time education which will be more effective than any long, all-day 
school. In fact, I incline strongly to the view that generally speaking, 
perhaps our most effective programs of vocational education will be 
realized by having the learner take a short course, perhaps a month or 
something of the sort, in an all-day school, and then be led in, or let 
into the industry, the productive work, on a part time basis; and re- 
member, of course, that we can get all the legislation we want to 
realize this if we know what we want. 

This part time plan was originally had in the Fitchburg scheme, 
where the boys, rather mature and perhaps too late, because the re- 
quirements were for one year high school education, as preliminary, 
had a week in the shop and a week in the school. Where the know- 
ledge that a vocational school gives can couple up with the practice of 
the shop, that makes a most effective combination, and I am rather in- 
clined to believe that in a great many fields there are some opportuni- 
ties opening for that. 

There are places where girls are being trained for salesmanship on 
this basis. The girl goes to the department store, works for a period, 
Mondays and Saturdays, and then goes back to the school and studies 
those things that intellectually, theoretically, give her strength in the 
vocation. All along the line, I think, that is going to be increasingly 
possible. I want to see our business school so develop that, even in the 
training of stenographers, after the stenographer makes her first ten- 
tative essay into employment, she will still have a period during which 
she can come back to the school by some arrangement and perfect her- 
self, because after all, a great deal of the so-called training of stenog- 
raphy that we give in this country is very far from being one hundred 
per cent stenographic training. As a matter of fact, many and many 


63 


a girl suffers long into her older years because she has never really 
gotten her trade properly. : 

When it comes to home-making, the second of the dual occupa- 
tions which a girl must enter, I don’t think that many of us think of 
the maintenance of a home as a wage-earning occupation. We are 
talking about the modal types now, where a young woman is gradually 
to rear three or four or five children and keep them up to American 
standards of living. That is what the boys in the street would call 
“some job,” and I don’t see that any of us today are in a position to 
dispute the point that this woman will have to give her whole time to 
that job if the American standards of living are to be kept up; con- 
sequently we will assume that the wife will not have to be a wage- 
earner. We shall have such cases, but I hope that more and more we 
shall take care of them as deserving charity cases by widows’ pensions 
or something of that kind, because among the wage-earning wives we 
find an extraordinarily high death rate of infants; so let us assume 
that this woman is going to make her home and make that her job and 
is going to come to it with an increasing sense of the needs of the sit- 
uation. 

Where are we going to train her and how? Well, as far as the 
method is concerned, I know of no field today in which the proper dev- 
elopment of the part time system of education is going to offer a larger 
return. We have been trying to equip laboratories or shops. In my es- 
timation, we shall soon discontinue all of that. We shall perhaps have 
some sort of a material equipment in our schools to give different 
standards from what the home imposes, but of course, a great deal of 
our home-making education, so-called, today is really pitched on a 
pretty high scale and some of the people responsible for it are going to 
have a pretty hard charge to face in the near future, that they are 
raising the standards of living of these girls to a point where anything 
like a normal production of a normal family becomes an impossibility ; 
so we must be careful, to keep within the practical available standards 
of life. ) 

My conviction is growing stronger all the time that when the girl 
is ready, from sixteen to twenty or from twenty-two to twenty-four, 
when the girl is ready for this home-making education, a part time sys- 
tem in which the girl would come for half of the day to the school and 
the other half at work in her own home, under the supervision of the 
teacher —I believe that will produce nearer one hundred per cent of 
return for your investment than anything else. 

I think is is going to prove an absolutely prohibitive as well as 
pedagogically unsound plan to try to equip laboratories in trying. to 


64 


organize argricultural schools in Massachusettes that the really profit- 
able thing to do was to use the boy’s own home farm for all this prac- 
tice work, that the school should be a gathering place, but that all the 
practice work in agriculture should be done on the farm; and let us 
remember that most of the work of these girls, from fifty to seventy- 
five per cent, will be practice that should be done in the home. 

' In case of this young woman, let her start on that basis and let her 
build on it. You may say that that will prove more expensive for the 
type of work we can get. It is true that the number of pupils per 
teacher must be kept down, probably about fifteen per teacher; but 
whether it be three months or six months, we can achieve so much in 
that period and then we can take another installment, so that I think 
that society can attend to that problem without any extraordinary 
expense. j 

Now ladies and gentlemen, I have covered a great deal of ground 
in a way. I am afraid that I haven’t made many of my points clear; 
but I have the feeling that in a sense, most of us—I certainly include 
myself in that—have been building castles in Spain in talking about 
vocational education, that we really have not yet faced the problem of 
building castles on the earth and digging our foundation visions of 
- what we would like to do, and we have been thinking in terms of excep- 
tional classes of children, and inevitably we have thought in terms of 
the brightest and most capable. The social workers have seen the 
other side, where the deficiencies of our system is most apparent, and 
some of them have said, “How easy it is to let the incompetent and the 
ne’er-do-wells drop by the way and forget them. It is so easy to forget 
them.” 

Now, I think, dealing in terms statistical and facts as they are and 
crowds as they are and numbers as they are, with the passage of the 
Smith-Hughes Bill and with the momentum of interest that is going to 
be set in motion as the result of that, we have all sorts of opportunities 
to come back to the public and say, ““We know now what effective vo- 
cational education is. We have our plans and we are prepared to put 
them into effect.” 


65 


EFFICIENCY IN THE HOME 
ABBEY MARLATT 


Professor of Household Economics 
University of Wisconsin 

MISS MARLATT: Madam Chairman, Members of the Vocational 
Convention:. . 

I feel a little bit like the man whose play was refused but whose 
thunder was taken. (Laughter.) The subject that was assigned to 
me is, aS you know, Efficiency in the Home. I concluded I would go 
back and catch my breath with some old diaries and I found this that I 
am going to read to you as the work of one girl for one day: 

“Fixed gown for Prude. Mended mother’s riding hood; spun a 
short thread. Worked on cheese basket; pleated and ironed. Read a 
sermon of Dalridge’s. Spooled a piece. Milked the cows. Spun linen, 
did fifty knots. Madea broom of guinea wheat straw and spun thread. 
Set a red dye. Had two scholars from Mrs. Taylor’s. Carded two 
pounds of wool and spun harness twine. Scoured pewter.” 

There is somehting to be said for such a day. At least, there was 
no monotony. The only monotonous thing about it was the variety. 
When you think of some of the recent studies of Josephine Goldmark 
“On the Border-line of Fatigue,” you know that change is a very valu- 
able thing in rest. 

I have another from the Pennsylvania Packet of 1780. ‘Wanted 
—At A Seat—” “About half a day’s journey from Philadelphia, a 
single woman of unsullied reputation and affable, cheerful, active and 
amiable disposition, cleanly, industrious, perfectly qualified to direct 
and manage the female concerns of country business, as raising small 
stock, dairying, marketing, carding, spinning, knitting, sewing, pre- 
serving, and so forth. Such a person will be treated with respect and 
esteem and met with every encouragement due to such a character.” 

Unfortunately, I have no record of the sequel, but on Janauary 15, 
1917, I got this: “If the housewives of Duluth have any maids by din- 
ner time tonight they will have to recognize the new Housemaids’ 
Union, and change their attitude radically. That is flat. The maids 
say so. They said it in writing, too, when they presented their de- 
mands today. The one hundred charter members of this, the first do- 
mestics’ union organized east of the Missouri river, today, demanded 
twenty to twenty-five dollars a month for families of two, twenty-five 


66 


to thirty dollars for families of three or more. They demand a nine 
hour working day, one day off a week, and time and a half for over 
time. They want good food and well lighted and ventilated rooms.” 

Nothing said about any of the demands in Duluth in the article 
stating what was “Wanted at a seat about half a day’s journey from 
Philadelphia. One hundred thirty years makes a difference in our 
point of view. 

I am quite sure that Dr. Snedden, in his very able address, forgot 
when he was a woman or perhaps he hasn’t reached that point of evo- 
lution yet. (Laughter). Itis very difficult for me to talk in language 
that applies to man’s vocational education. I very seldom am reckless 
enough to do it; but to wait until we are twenty-four or twenty-five 
years of age to teach us the details of efficiency in home making, is to 
wait until we have reached the age of reason when we know that if we 
have to go through all of that, we will keep on with the occupation we 
arein. (Laughter.) 

You and I know that the very small girl in the family wants to do 
exactly what her mother is doing and that is the time to teach her the 
entrol of her muscles efficiently. If we are going to really go back to 
this condition where we can teach the girl to do her work in terms of 
sub-conscious control of the muscles, we must not wait until twenty 
years of age. We have got to do it early, if we have to do it before 
the school period begins. I am not sure but what we begin our school 
work too early, that if we could have more of these teachers who went 
around from home to home and helped a mother to teach the girl in 
these years before she went to school, we would get an extraordinary 
amount of efficiency, but Iam not advocating that as a method yet. 

I feel that there is a great deal to be said along the line of the 
cultural value of our home economic courses or for domestic science 
and domestic art courses, as we call it farther down in our public school 
education. I agree perfectly with Dr. Snedden that the type of educa- 
tion gives a point of view and a very valuable point of view. If we 
want to do intensive teaching work we ought to take the girl from six 
to eight hours a day and teach her to cook so that her technique is 
more nearly perfect at an age when she likes technique. To wait until 
she gets to the period of college life, for even that very small minority 
who go to college is to wait beyond the point where perfect control may 
be attained. But, if it hasn’t been reached at that time, we have at 
least got to show her how difficult it is to acquire, and that is a point 
of view. 

Now, when we come to talk about ideals as to efficiency in home 
making, it depends very largely upon the inheritance of the girl. She 


67 


is limited by the standards of the nationality from which she comes, | 
That limitation may be good or bad, according to your point of view, 
but she goes into her home with the ideals that she received in those 
very early formative years. 

What I believe we should have, and the type of education that [ 
think we must have, is training for motherhood all along the line be- 
cause it is in those first six to eight years that we fix the standard in 
both boy and girl. 
of the man in it. You have got to educate on both sides and the 

Your efficient home is either made or handicapped by the attitude 
mother is usually on the job from “twenty-four to thirty-six hours” 
every day. She isn’t paid time and a half for over time but she does it. 
Fortunately for her, age long inheritance as well as nurture has formed 
her so that she is willing to do itif she is taken early enough. (Laugh- 
ter.) The difficulty comes from the fact that her education has not 
. been broad enough so that she realizes that the demands of convention 
and the demand of fashion are to be met if she can, but to be ignored 
absolutely if it becomes impossible, that those are side issues in the 
main thing, the main thing being to meet the needs of the family so 
that they may become citizens of which a nation is proud. 

Now, how shall she do that? If she is going to spend all of her 
time—and in our rural education problem in this country, the United 
States has given us statistics which say that about one per cent of — 
the rural homes have house workers—then she must be able to judge 
wisely as to what to omit. It is largely a question of training in judg- 
ment. Today so much of the material can be bought ready to eat and 
ready to wear that it becomes a question of education in judgment, 
education in expenditure of time and as to the things to which that 
time shall be devoted. 

I believe that we can train a girl to be an understanding user of 
physical laws as they are applied to this very complex machine which 
we call the house. Even the poorest house is so infinitely more com- 
plex than the castles of early England, that if we took one of those 
people and put her into the house today, despite a quotation from a 
friend of mine, she would be utterly nonplussed with what to do with 
the plumbing system, the electric connections, and all the other types 
of apparatus. She would not do what a very noted Syrian in this 
country said about the farmers in Syria; that if the men in the time of 
Christ came back to Syria, they could go into the fields and go on with 
the work exactly as if nothing had happened in the two thousand years 
between. ho 

Reincarnated woman could not do that today. We have got a 


68 


complex machine at best and we must learn to use it, and I know of 
nothing in the way of machinery that requires more detailed practice 
than running this machine. We require a boy to be at least beyond 
sixteen in our state, and to have even then somebody older with him, 
before he is allowed to run an automobile, but even he isn’t allowed to 
run an automobile until he has learned how. In this country we need 
to recognize that the machinery of a home is a very complicated thing 
and we need to train for efficiency in running it. I believe talking 
- about it does some good, it makes us think, but the thing that is crucial 
is running it. 


Now, in England at one time they conceived the idea that they 
would train the girl by letting her run the janitor’s home. They stop- 
ped it, I suspect very largely because they couldn’t get janitors. 

Then they introduced the apartment in the school and let the girl 
do her experimenting there. We are doing that to some extent in this 
country. I believe the housekeeping centers that we find in some of 
our large cities are extremely valuable because they are modeled as 
nearly as possible on the amount of money that that type of girl can 
afford to put into running a home. It means that they are taught the 
efficient management of a small machine. The same type of business 
management that they are trained in in any other field will make them 
efficient in their organization, but it will not give them technique, and 
I hold very strongly that the girl who has tried out for an intensive 
period her own home, if she can get it, as suggested by Dr. Snedden, 
some one else’s home if she can borrow it, or the school home if there 
is one provided, if she has done it for one week she will never be afraid 
of it seriously again. She has met most of the problems and finds 
that she is capable in a way of swinging it. | 

Now, that kind of work is being done far down in the grades so 
that we reach the mass of the girls who can go into these juvenile 
trades, but has the girl got in her sub-consciousness, a standard so 
when she comes into her own, she meets that standard as nearly as 
possible. 

I know that Vienna has had for quite a long number of years 
what she calls “bride schools.” There was a notice the other day—I 
have no further report of it—of a mothers’ school in one of our Califor- 
nia towns. We have the mothers’ clinics in almost every well organ- 
ized city, so that the mothers do have an opportunity for this advanced 
training in the care of children; but the small child can be taught the 
proper care of the child with its mother, and in some of these homes 
that I know best, the older child is allowed with the help of the mother, 


69 


to bathe and dress the child, so that the technique of it comes in when 
the child is free enough mentally to acquire technique. 

Judgement is a matter of years and will come in the course f years. 
That we can allow to take care of itself, but we must teach this girl a 
pretty thorough knowledge of the laws of sanitation, not from the 
sense of teaching fears, but teaching what to do rather than what not 
to do, and I believe again there it is a question of teaching it so that 
it becomes sub-conscious. Most of our laws of good hygiene are funda- 
mental laws of good manners, and if we can teach that way down in 
our grades, we have at least the basis for eliminating a great deal of 
disease. 

When we come to the laws of economics, I believe again the house 
wife must have a working knowledge of this. It comes, through 
spending earned income from the smallest years onward. The child 
who is paid a penny a week is learning how to spend its own. The 
money that comes easily goes easily and no matter how poor the 
family or how wealthy the family, that child should be trained in eco- 
nomics if she is going to be an efficient home maker. 

The amount of money that is spent needlessly by girls who do not 
understand, was brought to my attention very forcibly in a story that 
was told to me the other day of a young woman who had always en- 
joyed a home where the income is practically unlimited. She has a 
fair income of her own in her own right, but she had never bought 
anything that could be called purchasing for a home. She married, 
and she told her sister who was older and had been married for some 
years, “Do you know how much spring chicken costs, and I have been 
eating it recklessly all my life?” 

The trouble with our homes throughout the country is that the 
great mass of them—the modal home—has, says Scott Nearing, from 
six to seven hundred dollars annual income. The great mass doesn’t 
even have that, and yet that woman has to do the work of a larger 
income on that smaller amount. 

I am not so sure about the accuracy of the conclusions in regard to 
death of infants of the women who work. I have been watching with 
a great deal of interest for quite a number of years and I know that 
data collected in Fall River shows that infant mortality is higher 
among the women .who stay at home and do all of the labor of the 
house, including the washing and lifting of buckets of water and carry- 
ing of tubs and that sort of thing, which the woman has done automati- 
cally for years, and which seems much more deadly than the textile 
work, or than the transportation trades, much more deadly in terms of 
vital stastistics. Hunt up your government records on that subject 


70 


and see what is said. Our rural stastistics from this middle western 
country show that the death rate in the first month of life is highest 
in our rural sections. If the baby is able to pass the dead line of in- 
fancy, which is the first month, then the country is a wonderful place 
to develop. 

Until we can teach the man as well as the woman what stands for 
efficiency in the home, we are going to find the woman expected to do 
a lot of these beast of burden trades—pardon me, Dr. Snedden—beast 
of burden occupations that make for loss of human life, not only for 

the woman herself but for the infant. 
) These are the things we must teach if we are going to teach ef-— 
ficiency in the home. It isn’t a question of training the woman alone. 
[i do talk, you see, occasionally on the side lines on the training of the 
men. | : 

The boy who is not taught in these very early years that the 
mother is the thing to be saved at all points—hasn’t been taught cor- 
rectly. It is not a question of cultural value, it is a question of the 
spiritual value of that home that is at stake. 

The girl must know as well as the boy, the fundamental laws of 
nutrition if this home is going to be efficient. The man that demands 
beef or mutton or pork three times a day and earns but six hundred 
dollars a year is demanding that which he cannot receive except at the 
sacrifice of other members of the household. 

I wish that Dr. Snedden had made his point very much more em- 
phatic on the occupation. One of the most wonderful occupations is 
that unpaid occupation, rich in spiritual value, where the woman takes 
raw material, purchased with the six or seven hundred dollars a year 
that the man earns—and makes it into value that corresponds to 
twelve hundred dollars or more and brings up a family that the state 
values in workmen’s compensation from four to five thousand dollars 
each. 

That is her productive occupation, and if we are going to train the 
girl for her productive occupation we must begin early, before she 
realizes the length of time it takes to complete that particular occupa- 
tion; for the moment she reaches middle life, she comes in again as 
“professor emeritus” under the name of grandmother. She has to help 
out this woman who hasn’t any other help except her two hands and 
what her husband can help her on the side, after he has completed his 
eight hour day while she is still going on with her sixteen. 

If neither of them knows the law of nutrition then we get infant 
mortality rates soaring as it is in city life, where the girl goes to work 
so early that she doesn’t even have a chance to know how the children 


71 


f 


of the future should be fed, and the infant mortality in our urban pop- 
ulation beyond the first month is very high. 

Take countries like New Zealand, where they have efficient educa- 
tion along the line of human nutrition and we find they have a death 
rate among infants that is extremely low. We cannot begin to touch 
it in other countries. 

The intelligent needs of the family: I feel that there is much to 
be said on this side of the subject. Who is going to provide it? If this 
girl has to go to work early and the man has to go to work early, who 
is going to make this home efficient along the intellectual side? Is this 
purely a piece of machinery where childern are ground out into the 
public school and into the church and then on into life? We get a 
perfectly vicious wheel of things, and we are tied to it. It is no 
wonder, that the rebellion becomes ripe, because in this endeavor to 
make us efficient we have forgotten spiritual things. : 

I believe with Dr. Snedden, that it is very difficult to mix cultural 
education with vocational training, but I do believe that the work that 
is done down in the grades is not so efficient as Dr. Snedden would lead 
us to believe. The child comes out with little or almost no love of 
literature. You talk with the boy and the girl, you talk with the young 
woman and the young man and they loathe all of these things. I re- 
member a time when I was asked to teach one subject that I wasn’t 
proficient in and I said I didn’t know how to teach it, but the head of 
the department said she would help me. But when she told me how 
she read the rhyme of the Ancient Mariner to her class, I withdrew. 
I couldn’t get up before a class, and say I “‘was the first that ever 
burst, into that silent sea.” That emphasis was too much for me. 
We have got more nonsense in our teaching of reading and English 
literature than we can possibly live down. I wish that the child could 
learn to read with appreciation, but I do not believe this exaggerated 
type of emphasis of which I have given an illustration, will do the 
work. If we could only have this vocational education put into a few 
hours a day, and then some part of the day given over to something 
that I was going to say is more worth while—I am not sure but that it 
is—we would be infinitely better off. We are struggling so hard to 
produce things for which the price is going up; we struggle harder and 
the prices go a little higher and we struggle harder and the price goes 
a little higher. It is all a vicious circle. There is something wrong with 
the economic situation. I am not sure but that it is because we talk 
about it so much. I was quite interested to find that in New York 
City the price of a staple article that we all wear on our feet hasn’t 
gone up anywhere near so much as it has in the town from which I 


72 


come. Our papers have been full of prices of shoes going up from four 
to twelve and sixteen dollars. They haven’t gone up in New York— 
the same type of shoe. I think we talk too much about it, we suggest 
the idea that the price is going up and it goes. . 

I think to be an efficient manager of the home we must know when 
to keep quiet. We must know when to substitute. We must know 
when it is worth while to say to a man who is putting up the prices, 
“You are welcome to the article.’’ The effort is to teach the small 
child a varied diet so that when it comes to substitution we won’t be 
confronted with a round of “I prefer bread and potato and gravy, and 
butter and bread and potato and gravy.’’ You can’t work many changes 
on that. The great trouble with our education is not that we are teach- 
ing them beyond what we can afford; but we are not giving them the 
breadth of view or knowledge of values. It is a question of training in 
judgment, and the girl should have it. The man should have it. I 
think we should teach a higher standard in choice of amusements and I 
do not know of anything that will teach it except that we come right in 
and help. I believe a great deal of our vocational education might be 
clarified and simplified, if we taught some things that were along the 
line of satisfactory amusements. We as a people are earning more 
money, we are spending it in the picture shows, with the result that 
some of the managers of picture shows are earning more than the 
president. of the United States. And yet. we wonder at the high cost 
of living. The picture show proposition may be very good; it may be 
very bad, but it is a habit, and to spend five cents a day per individual 
in the family means that the Associated Charities must come to the 
rescue. I remember a story that was told me about one woman whom 
the Associated Charities were helping and they found that she was 
spending at least thirty-five cents a week on picture shows. It may 
have made for intellectual advancement, but there are less sails 
methods and, I think, more effective. 

The spiritual values in the home can be experienced but it is ex- 
tremely difficult to teach them and I believe that if we could control a 
certain type of “practice cottage’? work in some of our schools, we 
could establish in the mind of the girl an ideal. I see the handicap in 
that in perhaps most of the schools it would be one sided training, but 
even learning to live with another woman is a liberal experience. 
(Laughter.) It helps and at least they have learned how to go around 
instead of through. (Laughter.) And in such cottage practice, I believe 
lies the hope of the future. We have too little practical knowledge of 
problems in home making. Our divorce courts show it. The girl needs 
to be trained in how to make the most of what she has to work with. 


73 


She had better make her mistakes in a practice cottage or in a practice 
apartment. 

Even if she practices only five or six days intensively she does 
not have to start in absolutely without any back ground of knowledge 
of how far her husband’s income or wage, whatever term you use, will 
go. If she has lived on a limited income and has been given the money 
with which to buy, she knows that she has got to know substitutes in 
foods if she is going to give that family a satisfactory diet. She knows 
that women are particular and that food must be attractive. Not only 
in taste but appearance. Unfortunately; as I say, we can’t very easily 
adopt a man into such a family and let him work it out with them. 
The only thing that they can do is to try to imagine what their fathers 
or their brothers would like and see if they can provide it. There 
again, you see, you get the limitation of their previous career on such 
an experiment. ! 

As far as educational methods are concerned I believe with Dr. 
Snedden, that most of the domestic arts and domestic sciences in the 
grades and high schools and most of the home economic courses in the 
universities, are of distinct cultural value in that they give that wide 
point of view on life in general that makes such students a very potent 
force in the world, but if we are going to reach the rank and file of the 
girl who makes the home of the future, we must start early and keep 
at it. 

I should like to see Dr. Snedden’s method used and I dislike to be 
skeptical but knowing women, as I have known them, and knowing 
girls as I have known them—I believe the time to teach home making 
is when the girl loves to play with dolls, before she reaches the adoles- 
cent period when she becomes self conscious: If this is done you have 
put in a background that will make them sane enough and sensible 
enough to take advanced courses in motherhood when they need them. 


74 


WORK FOR WOMEN 
MISS ISABELLE BEVIER 


Head of Home Economics Department, University of Illinois 


Madam Chairman, Members of the Conference: I find myself in 
an exceedingly embarrassing situation. Iam no orator, as Dr. Snedden 
is. I have not been accustomed ‘‘to think in modal quantities.” I hate 
statistics; and yet, having listened and having looked into the faces 
of these people, I wonder if, after all, the capacity in which I have 
served the State of Illincis for eighteen years will not serve me in this 
instance. I came here when home economics was not known and was 
not respectable, even, and for the first ten years of my life in the 
State of Illinois, I, without any effort on my part at all, was known as 
an ignorant but well-intentioned woman. I am to. speak in that capa- 
city to younow. (Laughter.) 

It will take only a few minutes for me to give my philosophy of 
education. which is not going to disturb Dr. Snedden’s at all and which 
will agree with Miss Marlatt’s and have her support. I am sure of 
one thing, that both she and I will feel that our years of effort are a 
good deal wasted if, somewhere and somehow, there are not some 
women who can run homes better because of their home economics 
training, even if by the time they are fourteen years old or sixteen 
years old, they have not been taught every process that goes on in the 
home, from washing the baby to milking the cow or running the 
electric machines. I do believe that the Lord intended some things to 
be learned by women and men at first hand; and I feel that we may 
feel for these people who must leave school at ten or twelve, that they 
are educated, and care not by that time, and then, as a good home 
economics woman, I am going to say that the home economics that 
they have is the one thing that does save them and is often the one 
educational influence that means something to them, because it is vital 
to their lives. It is much more understandable to them than a good 
deal of their English or their arithmetic either one, and it is worth just 
as much, (applause) every bit, and more, and it is just asgood train- 
ing. You will find a good many stupid girls, that you would call stupid, 
and stupid boys, that haven’t done anything and didn’t get the mean- 
ing even of what the figures meant until they were applied to their 
home economics or their manual training. 

So I differ decidedly in this one point, that elementary home eco- 


75 


nomics doesn’t amount to much as a liberal education. My definition 
of education is that it enables us to see things in their relations, and 
that is the reason that I want a little vocational education to go along 
with the liberal; and if you are going to send them out to tend a ma- 
chine after they are fourteen years old and you can teach them to tend 
that machine in a month, then just give them all the liberal education 
you can beforehand. (Applause). 

Now, I have that one point; then this a totally different thing. It 
doesn’t have anything to do with it, and I never have said it in a public 
audience before, though I have thought it. I am thoroughly co-educa- 
tional in my sentiments, but I don’t quite understand, when you get 
ready to talk about vocational education for women, that it is so ter- 
ribly different from what it is for men. Don’t the men have to be 
educated dually if the women have to be educated dually? I don’t 
understand this dual education all along the line. It seems to teach © 
that there are two jobs for women and one job for men. I haven’t 
found it that way. I am thoroughly co-educational in my sentiments, 
but I have been in the habit of going alone and I don’t have to have 
two kinds of schools to have individuals taught. 

Iam going to give just my plan, coming from this ignorant and 
well-intentioned woman that comes from the country. I am going to 
tell what I think the business of a school in a town of fifteen thousand 
is. I live in that kind of town and so I have certain ideas about it. 
This kind of a town has a beautiful new school building. If a school 
for home-making was opened for girls that were twelve years old, for 
girls that were sixteen years old, for girls that were twenty-years old, 
none would attend. Why? Because they don’t earn their living that 
way. I think that a school ought to meet the needs—the public school 
that is taxed for the people and has the people’s money—ought to meet 
the people’s needs. 

Now, the town in which I live is not a factory town and it does not 
have mills, so I am saved a lot of trouble, but we do have people, fifteen 
thousand of them, and we do have a number of young girls who are 
earning their living. They are not all in school. What do they do? 
One thing is to go into the dry goods store. They are telephone girls; 
they are in offices of one kind and another. There isn’t any reason 
why this beautiful new school building shouldn’t train them for sales- 
manship, shouldn’t offer the course right along with other liberal 
courses. 

I don’t know who is going to say to them, “It is time for you to 
quit this and go into a vocation.’”’ How do you know but that they will 
be able to do a great deal better where they are? I suppose Dr. Snedden 


716 


knows all about this, (laughter) but there are so many” honorable 
points of ignorance” about vocational education that it would take me 
all night to tell about them, so I am just going to tell you one simple 
plan. 

We have a business college and we have people there who under- 
stand salesmanship in the stores, and they could have this at night, 
and if it is only going to take the pupils a month to learn, it is a simple 
matter and then they could go out, but it would not take two complete 
outfits to do it. It seems to me the opportunity of the public school 
system is to meet the needs of its pupils by providing training. I 
don’t know who society it; I don’t know who is going to provide this 
double system. We have difficulty enough with our taxes to get our 
new high school building paid for, and I don’t understand the dual 
method at all. 

I beg your nese for my ignorance. I have done as well as I 
could. 


77 


FIRST STEPS IN AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 
BERT BALL 


Secretary, Crop Improvement Committee Council of Grain Exchanges, Chicago 


The old fogy who first said “children should be seen and not 
heard,” has for the past several generations done much to discourage 
the inquiring mind and out of that doctrine has grown our present 
school system which considers that our children are bottles into which 
cold facts are to be poured and corked up. “Everything going in and 
nothing coming out,” to paraphrase the common slang, which is 
against nature. 

He is denied the right of expressing himself and is made to sit in 
his seat during the greater part of the day looking at something 
which does not interest him and even denied the right to. whisper to his 
chum. 

This must all be changed. Some inspired teachers have already 
blazed the way. The teaching of agriculture in the schools is exactly 
the same as teaching anything else, or should be. The children in the 
lowest grades should be encouraged to look about them. They will not 
need to be taught this because it is natural. They should be encour- 
aged to use their eyes and their pencil, to draw common forms, to learn 
the shape of things and their relative sizes. Their reading, writing 
and arithmetic should begin its correlation from the start with these 
common objects. It is impossible to cover this subject exhaustively in 
a discussion of this kind. Let us boil it down to this general principle. 
Teach the young idea to shoot in natural directions, just as the young 
plant learns to shoot and takes root. 

Here he gets his first idea of geography.: Lucky that pupil who has 
shrubs, flowers, trees, a running brook or something which will endear 
the place to his memory. 

Next comes the school district. In nearly every rural community 
there are about as many children in the school as there are farmers in 
the district. It is impossible to begin agriculture without knowing 
first something about the agricultural conditions surrounding the 
school. Growing rice, dates, and cocoanuts would have little effect on 
the education of a corn belt farmer boy. He should be encouraged to 
get his education in the terms of the life about him and the best way 
is to send him out to gather information, to ask questions and to write 
down the answers ; to classify what he has learned and compare it with 


78 


other conditions; to correlate it into his school work: geography, read- 
ing, writing and arithmetic, all the time learning agriculture. 

What can the children do which is simple and efficient? They can 
bring samples of all the seeds to be sown. upon their home farms, learn 
to identify varieties, learn to know and how to combat the dangerous 
weed seeds, learn to recognize smut and grain diseases and to treat 
these diseases with formaldehyde. They can select a farmer-partner, 
father or neighbor, for whom to test seeds in the Rag-Doll and blotting 
paper testers, all of which is ideal school work and teaches a practical 
agriculture which could never be learned by memorizing from books. 

The same principle applies to farm animals, poultry and country 
roads. It is the very foundation of farm management. 

The district school should be the neighborhood club. It should 
have an auditorium, a swimming pool, a gymnasium, a stage, a piano, a 
phonograph, sewing machines, a well-equipped kitchen, a place to eat, a 
place to dance, a place to sing. Elections should be held there. It 
should be the center of community life and it will be when we get our 
eyes open. 


cg 


TO WHAT EXTENT: CAN ‘THE SCHOOLS: PROVIDE 
AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION? 


MATTHEW P. ADAMS 


Director Mooseheart Vocational Institute, Mooseheart, Illinois. 


Ladies and Gentlemen: I want to say a few words at the begin- 
ning as to just what Mooseheart is. Mooseheart is a vocational school 
for the dependent orphans of the Loyal Order of Moose, that is, when 
a member of this fraternal order dies, his children have an opportunity 
to go to Mooseheart. We havea large farm of abut 1015 acres situated 
on the Fox River. It is about three and one-half miles long and a mile 
wide. We have many cows, chickens, pigs and things of that sort. 

We have mapped out a plan of agricultural education that I think 
you would be interested in. It would be just as applicable to a city as 
to a little town such as we have. 

You perhaps know that during the last three generations, people 
have been moving from the country to the city. In fact, three genera- 
tions ago, about sixty-three per cent of the people were in the country ; 
two generations ago, fifty-nine per cent, and this last generation, only 
fifty-four per cent are in the country. It seems to me that the boys 
and girls in the city have been neglected so far as agricultural work 
goes, but it is only going to be a few years until the boys and girls will 
have that opportunity. 

Now, there is nothing to prevent any city, even a city as large as 
Chicago, having a farm school somewhat similar to the one we have. 
I want to tell you what we are trying to do there. We are starting 
with the boys and girls who are eleven or twelve years old, and “rout- 
ing’ them through the farm. For instance, they go out and do some 
practice work with the chickens and have what they call a ‘“‘chicken 
class,”’ where they learn the “‘bad side” of chickens. This is outside of 
the regular school day, which is four hours long. We have school all 
the year round, and the boys and girls don’t seem to be very distressed 
over it. They have a week’s vacation at Christmas, a week at Easter 
and about two weeks in the summer. 

In the prevocational work, which is for the boys and girls from 
twelve to fifteen years of age, we allow about two years of agricultural 
work and one year of industrial work. I can well understand that in 
the city it would probably be necessary to have one year of agricultural 
work and two years of industrial work. 


80 


Now, let us see what happens to the boys. We are going to “route” 
the girls the same way. The boys start with the hens. We discovered 
that if we started them with the cows, they didn’t want to go to the 
hens afterwards, because they thought the hens are something that 
girls or women ought to look after. They have, say, in the morning, 
four hours in our academic school, and I want to mention the fact 
right here, that we are correlating the school work with the vocational 
work. They have four hours in the afternoon with the hens; two 
hours and a half of that is in groups in the “hen school.” I use the 
“hen school,” “hog school,” ‘‘cow school,” and “horse school’ in order 
that you may know that there is book work along with the practical 
~ work. . 

A boy, for instance, works in the hen-coop. He collects the eggs, 
he notices the different sheets to find out how each individual hen is 
getting along. He learns that if the hen isn’t delivering the goods, she 
had better be used for fricassee on the next Sunday. In the little hen 
schoolroom they have such experiments as are applicable to hens, some 
such as you have seen this morning, except that they haven’t been 
able to present them in such a fine way. They learn, for instance, that 
some hens have as their object in life the laying of eggs and that other 
hens are raised for their flesh. They learn to identify the different 
hens. They learn to watch the hens and know how they are laying. 

It is the same when they go to the hog school, because they spend 
three months in these different units, half a day ata time. They learn 
that certain hogs are for producing fat, some are for producing ham, 
or bacon. They learn how to identify the different types of hogs. In 
the arithmetic in this hog school and also in our regular academic 
work, they learn how much we are buying a boar for, or how much we 
got for the last hogs we sold, and things of that sort. 

This is all pre-vocational work with boys from twelve to fifteen. 
They have the regular manual work connected with these different 
departments, the cows, the hogs and the horses and hens and crops 
and greenhouse and nursery. After they have started with the hens, 
they may jump to any one of these subjects, but they all have to go 
through every one of them. It has been interesting to notice, when we 
change, that it is the hardest thing in the world to pry them loose 
from the place where they have been. For the first week they are with 
the cows, if they have been with the hogs, they are dissatisfied, but 
finally like the work with the cows just as they did with the hogs, and 
in three months they don’t want to leave them. 

After they have been through these nine different branches of the 
farm, they are then routed through the industrial department. They 


81 


go through the carpenter shop for three months, the paint shop, the 
cement shop, the machine shop, the garage, and so on. i 

Boys that will want later on to specialize in farm work, and we 
have probably about fifteen or eighteen that are going to take up farm- 
ing as their lifework, have to have special training or preparation, so 
that sometimes they stay longer in these different prevocational 
classes. For instance, it is absolutely necessary for a boy who is get- 
ting into farm work to know something about cement and concrete. We 
have a small cement plant where the boys learn to make fence-posts, 
silos and things of that sort. It isn’t an intricate and difficult matter. 
It is such a thing that all farmers ought to know, especially at the 
present time when concrete and cement are being used so much. 

It is somewhat the same in the carpenter shop. The boys spend 
three months there. We give four hours daily to this work, two in the 
carpenter shop and two in drafting. The boys does his drafting, the 
thing he wants to build, and can take his blue print right into the 
carpenter shop and two in drafting. The boy does his drafting, the 
is to keep them separate. | | 

The work of these boys, when they are in the carpenter shop, 
has to do with making hen-coops and things they would have to make 
on the farm. They also have to draw plans for a hog-barn and cow- 
barn, and finally for a model farmer’s house. In the paint shop they 
learn to mix paints and the combination of colors. 

They are getting, it seems to me, a love for agriculture and out- 
door life that it would be impossible for them to get any other way. 
We have the agricultural department and the industrial department. 
The agricultural department, when we started threre years ago, de- 
veloped very rapidly, of necessity. The industrial department devel- 
oped very slowly. There has been a tendency on the part of 
almost every boy that is with us to want to go into the farm work, and ~ 
I am wondering when we complete our industrial department, whether 
it will still hold true that most boys will want the farm life. In any 
event, after they have gone through this prevocational work, in case 
they do not want to go on with farming, they have had a practical 
education. 

Now, on the academic side, while they spend a half-day in school, 
we are tying up that school work in every possible way with both the 
agricultural work and the industrial work. It gives a new point of 
view, I think. When you look at a school from that view-point, it 
means that your idea of English changes, your idea of arithmetic is 
different, and your idea of geography is completely changed. You 
don’t teach the gulfs and the bays and the mountain peaks, etc., of 


82 


“North America, but you study about what North America produces. 
You learn about transportation. You learn about organized labor. 
You learn about social service and things of that sort. 

We have a course now that we are mapping out—two course for 
the high school boys. One is called business relationship and the other, 
social relationships. Those are a mixture of history, geography and 
civics. We have a free hand in that we don’t have to follow any 
definite course of study. Z 

Coming back to the agricultural side again, it seems to me it has 

been neglected to an enormous extent here in the central west. Out 
in the rural districts a great deal has been done with it, but in the 
' suburbs of the city very little has been done. There are hundreds, 
thousands of greenhouses right around Chicago here, and I think if 
you should go to those greenhouses, you would find that the people 
that work in them have come from the country somewhere. Now there 
are probably thousands of people, thousands of boys and girls here 
in Chicago, that ought to have that training, that ought to go out to 
these greenhouses. They ought to have that chance. 

In regard to the girls on the farm. I have been outlining a course 
for girls and indictating to my secretary, at the part where I mapped 
out the work in the cow-barn, I noticed a very distressed look on her 
face, when I dictated the fact that the girls should learn to milk the 
cows. She said she thought that was a poor idea, because if a girl 
on the farm ever learned to milk a cow, she would have to do all the 
milking. I don’t think that necessarily follows. I think in our courses 
for girls, it is going to be a fine thing for these girls to learn how to 
harness a horse, milk a cow, keep bees, work in the greenhouse, and 
learn rose culture, for instance. We have two tremendous greenhouses, 
320 feet long and forty feet wide. We have about 5,000 rose plants. 
Now it is possible for a girl to do work in this line. They are doing 
it at the present time. There are a great many women running small 
farms or specializing in the different branches of farm work, and a 
girl ought to know these things just as well as how to make her own 
dresses. 

In working this out, there is something that we shall have to ex- 
periment on. It is perfectly impossible, as you who are familiar with 
farm work know, to take girls from twelve to eighteen and have them 
go as the boys do through these various divisions of the farm. This 
is because it is impossible in the case of a large farm, to get men who 
have the right point of view as far as the instruction of girls is con- 
cerned. I don’t know whether it has been done elsewhere or not, but 
we are going to experiment with it. IJ am going to get one or two 


85 


women of a fine type, who-have been through an agricultural school 
or college and probably in their girlhood lived on a farm, and then 
have them go with a group of ten or twelve girls, first, maybe with 
the hens, where they will spend three months, then to the cow-barn, 
the same teacher going along, and then maybe to the hog-barn. The 
other teacher wil start with the greenhouses and then go to the nur- 
sery, etc., and so each of these teachers will have to teach three or 
four subjects; yet even if this is true, the amount of prevocational 
work that a teacher can do would be sufficient for the purpose.. 

There is a great deal, it seems to me, in having these children 
get what you might call the agricultural point of view, that is, to 
realize what a farm is. Most children, even if they live in the country, . 
don’t realize what you might call the business side of a farm. We 
are putting special stress on that, as I said before, keeping account 
of each hen, keeping account with each cow, and the children know 
what we pay for those things. They know what we get when we sell 
them. We are trying to tie up all of that agricultural work with the 
school work. 

Only a few days ago, one of the boys came in and wanted some 
tarred paper. Living in the country as we do, the boys in the country 
hunt and then want to build shacks. This is a case where the drafting 
shop and the carpenter shop co-operate. The boys have to make little 
plans of the shacks they want to put up, and then they go to our waste 
pile for lumber and then build the little shack. Some of them are 
very crude. 

I find that in training the vocational teachers, the standard they 
have of what the product should be is so high that it tends to dis- 
courage the boys. For instance, a high type of carpenter will not want 
to accept work that isn’t just perfect, and some of the hardest work 
I have done has been to try to convince those men that if a boy has 
made a wheelbarrow or has made a shack and it is a little crude, it still 
ought to be accepted. The boy ought to be given a little praise for it, 
even, in order to encourage him, and not frowned on if his board isn’t 
planed exactly straight. 

For instance, a boy came in, wanted some tarred paper for a shack. 
I asked him how much, and he didn’t know. I personally didn’t know 
how many yards there were in a roll of tarred paper, so I sent him. 
down to the shop to find out, and then to go to the shack and measure 
up and see how much he would need for his shack. 

All around us, there are a thousand and one things that can be 
tied up with the class room work in that way, not only at Mooseheart, 
but in other schools. 


84 


Situated as we are there and having a special hog school, cow 
school and hen school, it isn’t necessary to do this experimental work, 
such as you have seen here this morning, in the regular classroom, so 
that our regular academic work is not interfered with to any great 
extent. It is simply that the point of view in that work is somewhat 
changed. That is, it is surcharged with agriculture and with industry. 
That doesn’t mean that the cultural side of the school suffers, because 
it doesn’t. | 

For instance—I don’t know whether you will agree with me or 
not, and Iam not throwing a brick at the old idea we have in regard to 
_ school—but it seems to me that English and music and drawing should 
be taught more or less from a cultural standpoint. This is true not 
only of an agricultural school but also of any school. For instance, in 
regard to English, if you are studying some of Sir Walter Scott’s 
books, it isn’t so very necessary to know every small detail of his life. 
happened to him, and some of the things he wrote, but such a little 
It is a necessary thing to know approximately when he lived and what 
bird’s-eye view of his life ought not to occupy much time. More time 
should be given to what you call extensive reading, rather than inten- 
sive reading. I think is is possible to read Shakespeare and enjoy it. 
I never did, because I was unfortunate in having to go into the thing 
too intensively, so intensively that I lost the beauty of the whole 
thing. 

I think the idea that these subjects can be taught from a cultural 
standpoint is the thing we ought to recognize in our agricultural as in 
our city schools. For instance, take music. In how many schools do 
elementary schools and high schools go out with a love for good music? 
we teach appreciation and love for music? How many children in the 
They learn to sing. Great emphasis is put on the fact that they must 
learn to sing by sight, and classes are graded on this basis. You have 
probably done the same thing yourself—graded classes on their ability 
to read by sight. You haven’t graded classes on their appreciation of 
good music. And that is the only reason we are teaching music. 

It is possible, I believe, to introduce this industrial and agricultural 
work into the different grades, and yet at the same time not lose the 
cultural side, for if agriculture is taught right, it is as cultural a sub- 
ject, if I may use that term, as anything else.. There is an apprecia- 
tion of life, appreciation of what the world means to us, appreciation of 
our place in the world that one gets from an agricultural education 
that one doesn’t get from anything else. 

I believe that every city ought to have a farm school. I know it has 
been done in some places. It was in Gary, Indiana, a number of years 


85 


ago, but they finally gave it up—I don’t know why. It is almost true 
that even with the added burden of paying for agricultural teachers, a 
properly conducted farm school could be almost self-supporting. The 
only loss would probably be on the salaries of some of the agricultural 
teachers. 

I realize, of course, that at Tuskegee and at Hampton there is a 
deficit every year of a good many thousand dollars, but that is because 
much that is not agricultural work, is charged to the farm, but if a 
separation were made, you would find that most of those schools are 
self-supporting. There is no reason, therefore, why such schools should 
be a burden to you. I do want to leave one last word with you. That is, 
this: There are probably in Chicago thousands of boys, and girls too, 
that would, if they had the opportunity, go into agricultural work. 
Now the door is absolutely closed to them because they happen to be 
here in Chicago or Boston or New York. They never can be farmers in 
spite of the fact that that is the thing in life that they should probably 
do. 

It ought not to be so. The farm workers ought not to be recruited 
entirely from farms. We ought to be organized on a more efficient 
basis, and I think the time is coming when these boys and girls in the © 
cities will have an opportunity to get out onto the farms and into farm 
life. 

There are two types of peoples in the world. There is what you 
call the city type and the country type. You, every one of you, are 
one, or the other of those two types. It is a rare person that enjoys 
the city and country equally. In these large cities you will find many 
people of the country type who never get out and never will get out, 
but simply be in the wrong place all their lives for lack of opportunity ; 
and I hope that the time will come, and come quickly, when all boys 
and girls wil have an opportunity to at least try out the thing, pre- © 
vocationally, to find whether they would like it or not. There ought to 
be this opportunity for all of them. (Applause.) 

THE CHAIRMAN: I think it would be a good idea, if anybody 
wishes to ask any questions, to ask them now, and I am sure that Mr. 
Adams will be glad to answer them. 

QUESTION: You said that these boys and girls are from families 
of the Moose, a fraternal order. Are they kept there on the farm all 
the time and do you take care of them? 

MR. ADAMS: I didn’t enter that side of it because I presumed 
you were interested in agriculture alone. About five years ago the 
members of the Loyal Order of Moose decided that they ought to have 
an orphanage. It took them two years to find out where they wanted 


86 


to locate that. A committee traveled all over the country, and finally 
decided that the Fox River Valley here was the richest and finest place. 
They wanted to be near a large city—Chicago, and a small city— 
Aurora, so that the children might have a touch of life in both places. 

This school is for boys and girls and we take them at all ages, 
from the time they are born, to fourteen and keep them until they are 
twenty, so you see, it is a very complex situation. We have the ele- 
mentary school and high school and the agricultural and industrial 
work. We have to deal with all those problems that people are now 
thinking about in the educational and social field at the present time. 
We have one baby that is twenty-two days old. Sometimes we take 
their mothers, and in this case the woman came from South Bethle- 
hem, Pennsylvania, and her husband died last May. She had no place 
to go. She had been sent to a city institution, and instead of that, the 
governors of Mooseheart sent for her to come, and the baby was born 
twenty-two days ago. 

The reason we keep them till such a late age is because we are 
tied up, and rightly so, with organized labor. I don’t know whether 
you know conditions or not through the Fox River Valley. It is a 
highly organized district. We have agreements which make it neces- 
sary for us to employ nothing but union labor. One of these agree- 
ments is that after these boys have gone through this pre-vocational 
-sampling of both farm and industrial side they choose a 
subject that they want to specialize in. Let us suppose it is electricity. 
The boy is put in a class in which there is a union instructor, and they 
go around and do the electrical work on the buildings that we have 
constructed. Wealso have electrical laboratories that they are making. 
Usually, you know, there is one apprentice from every ten or fifteen 
electricians. We have, say, six or seven boys to one electrician. The 
union has allowed us that latitude. 

They have also made this arrangment, that if we start the boys 
with them at fifteen and if we will allow them four years, when they 
get through, after they have been examined each year by a committee 
from the union, they will give the boys what is called a traveling ticket, 
that admits them to organized labor. They can take that ticket and 
go anywhere in the country they want to and make their connection 
with the local union. 

Mooseheart is a National institution. Many organizations have 
state institutions with twenty or thirty children, but this is really 
international, because we have a boy from the Philippines. We have 
children from Alaska, some from Florida and from Texas and so on. 
That is, it is an international home. The ideal under which we are 


87 


running that thing is that we want, so far as possible to make it a 
home for the children. We put children of all ages together in the 
same cottage. The cottage mother or cottage father stays in that 
cottage and will stay there as long as they are employed at Mooseheart. 
That means that the relationship that grows up between these children 
and these people in charge is somewhat like that of children and pa- 
rents. Living the outdoor life they do and getting the type of educa- 
tion they do, we have what we think is a mighty fine bunch of boys and 
girls. They come to us as they do to any institution, from the cities, 
for instance, and gradually get assimilated and straightened out. 


Now, the governors have said, I think very wisely, that we want 
this to be one of the best institutions in the country. “Why should we 
duplicate other institutions? Why not have the orphan children of our 
members go to the city institutions and be done with it, if we are going 
to do that? We want a particular type of education for these boys 
and girls. We want them surrounded by certain environments.” So 
they established this institution at Mooseheart. Together with it went 
this ideal, which I want to impress upon you, which I think is a won- 
derful thing. Having a free hand at Mooseheart, we want to try cer- 
tain experiments to see how they will work out. One of the experi- 
ments is this agricultural work with the girls. One of the experiments 
is the type of government we have there. It isn’t self-government, but 
what is called supervised self-government. | 

I might say a word in regard to that, because you who are interest- 
ed in education might be interested in the type of government we have. 
All the boys and girls meet every day at five o’clock at what is called 
the assembly. There, different things are brought up. We bring up, 
for instance, anything for the good of Mooseheart, and some of them 
make some constructive suggestions. We bring up any complaints. We 
bring up the question of appreciation. That is a new thing we have 
started—anything that they have seen during the day that has made 
them happy or any nice thing that has happened to them, or they have 
seen anybody else do, they speak of. 

Then comes what is called the black side. They have to report 
demerit marks. We have reorganized the thing to a sliding scale. The 
boy that swears is given from a half to four demerits. A boy that 
steals is given four, or a boy that plays hookey is given four. They 
report those at the assembly. When they accumulate five of them, 
they go on what is called the demerit line. That means that in their 
spare time they have to go around with one of the proctors, are sort of 
prisoners, and we find all the disagreeable and dirty tasks for them to 
do, so as to make their life as miserable as possible during these five 


88 


days. If a boy accumulates two demerits, he can work them off in this 
fashion. If he doesn’t get any more demerits at all, the two demerits 
are automatically wiped out; so there is a constructive side to it. There 
is a constant tendency for these boys to wipe them off before they get 
on the demerit line. 

They make their regulations in regard to the student behavior. 
My assistant is chairman of this assembly, and to a certain extent he 
does influence the vote. He doesn’t argue unless he leaves his place 
and steps down into the assembly and has somebody take his place, 
but an adult who is chairman of any meeting unconsciously influences 
things. These boys and girls, too, when they come in and report their 
demerit marks, have the opportunity of appealing or protesting from 
that mark. Forinstance, if a school teacher gives a boy a half-demerit 
for whispering he has got a right, when he reports, to stand up and 
protest and appeal from this, and the teachers have to prove their case. 
The boy has witnesses and the teacher will call on various persons for 
witnesses, and they debate it and the whole assembly votes on the 
thing. Sometimes the demerit mark is wiped out, sometimes it isn’t. 
There was only one in the last six months that I know of and which I 
thought was justified, which was wiped out. 

Now the beauty of that thing is not the boys’ standing up and 
defending themselves on their feet. That is a fine thing, but it is not 
that. Back of it all is this thing: Those boys and girls are weighing 
and balancing evidenee. They see that there are two sides to a thing. 
Now, most of us poor mortals go through life and only see one side. 
The more narrow-minded we are, the more we see of that side and we 
never think of the other side. These boys are taught that there are 
two sides to everything, and they weigh and balance each side of 
everything. Sometimes the boy says frankly, “I do deserve some 
punishment, but I don’t think I do deserve as much as you people want 
to give me.” ‘ 

It is that type of supervised self-government that we are experi- 
menting with there. That would work out in an agricultural school or 
industrial or even with an ordinary grade school. While there is this 
main assembly, we find that the proctors and the matrons and even the 
agricultural teachers are holding little assemblies of their own. If 
there is a fuss in the hen school, the agricultural teacher starts up a 
little assembly there for ten or fifteen minutes, and he is controlled by 
just the same rules and regulations as this large assembly, and they 
thrash a thing out and find which boy is to blame and he has to report 
a new demerit mark in the assembly, and he doesn’t dare protest it 
then, because many boys will get up and say they’ve investigated it. 


89 


THE FARM PAPER AS. A FACTOR IN THE EDUCATION 
OF THE FARMER 


FRANK B. WHITE, 


Managing Director Agricultural Publishers Association 


Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

When I saw the array of talent listed on your program, | imagined 
I would find myself in rather an awkward position, something like a 
square peg in a round hole. I confess that I 1am somewhat confused. I 
have listened to the words of the able speakers who have preceded me, 
with interest. I find myself in very much the same predicament as the 
minister who was very popular in his community and was called upon 
for all sorts of services. In fact, as most ministers are, he was over- 
worked. At the last minute and to fill a vacancy, he was called upon to 
preach a funeral sermon. He did not have time to’ familiarize himself 
with the case, or to find out anything about the deceased. He got 
along very nicely until he reached the point where it was necessary to 
be more specific and to say a few words of condolence. He did not 
know what the corpse was, male or female. He leaned over the pulpit 
and asked one of the mourners in an undertone, ‘““Brother or Sister ?” 
The answer came back, ‘‘No, cousin.” 

I don’t know whether it is a brother, sister or cousin, that I am 
supposed to talk about on this occasion. My topic is ““The Farm Paper 
as a Factor in the Education of the Farmer.” That is a big topic and 
may be approached or dealt with in any one of several ways. We are 
dealing with the greatest business on earth, and the Farm Paper as an 
educational influence has its place in this great industry, and an impor- 
tant place it is, because we must remember that farmers, as a rule, are 
not book readers. They depend upon their periodicals—newspapers 
and magazines—for their educational advancement, and. the Farm 
Paper to the farmer is first In importance and influence. 

Garfield told us that “At the head of all the sciences and arts, at 
the head of civilization and progress, stands, not militarism, the 
science that kills, not commerce, the art that accumulates wealth, but 
agriculture, the mother of all industry and the maintainer of human 
life.” 

Viewing it from that standpoint, we must be interested in Agri- 
culture; in fact, we are, whether we realize it or not. The bigness and 
importance of the industry demands treatment in a large way. That is 


90 


why we have Farm Papers representing approximately 14,000,000 cir- 
culation, covering this big land of ours, and that is why Farm Papers © 
have become great, strong, good and influential in advertising and 
business ; and, friends, the point at issue between your line of education 
and the Agricultural Press is not very different. We are all one people. 
Our interests are common. 

Iam sorry to see the tendencies of class distinction here and there, 
between the Country and the City. The line of demarcation should be 
eliminated. It is one big, national proposition, and I would have you 
know that you cannot go very far, exist very long, or accomplish very 
much in your activities, whatever they may be, without getting up 
against this Agricultural proposition good and hard. The farmer 
feeds the world, and he is entitled to the best of educational facilities. 

Did you notice on your breakfast table this morning the things 

you ate, how closely they touch Agriculture? Perhaps you had your 
cereals, bread, butter, eggs, meat, sugar. Each one of them traces 
back to the soil in the final analysis; and then, did you consider that 
each of them had to go through processes of transportation, manufac- 
ture, distribution and of business, before it reached your table? Labor 
was employed on the farm, and in all the other processes. The labor 
of getting the meal, after all of these things have been produced, is 
but a small part of what is required to prepare your breakfast. 
4 We cannot justly draw a divisional line anywhere. Our interests, 
physical, material and educational, are common. We of the Farm 
Press believe that we are making business men of farmers. The far- 
mer’s intelligence is increasing. He is becoming and is more and more 
recognized as the wealth producer of the world. It would be a mistake 
and I should be very sorry to see any school teacher undertake to teach 
Agriculture in an intelligent way without having at hand a good Farm 
Paper to prove up on a lot of the theories that our book makers present. 
The Farm Paper is the medium that keeps next to the soil.. Editorially 
they compare favorably with magizines, or any other periodical. If 
you would be a wise instructor, you must read the Farm Papers. 

If, as an educator, you find the Farm Paper valuable, how much 
more valuable is it for the man who makes farming his business. At 
the beginning the boy on the farm takes his first lesson in practical 
things from his father, or the hired man, who is doing things that a 
boy likes to see done. He copies and he gets his first lessons there. 
The girl the same way. Farm Papers pass on, distribute and dissem- 
inate wisest and best methods of doing things on the farm. You at 
labor in the schools have your classes of tens, fifties or hundreds, as 
case may be. The Farm Papers have their millions. They are teach- 


91 


ing practical lessons. They are continuously doing it. The farmer’s 
education goes.on and he develops just as the rest of us do. 

The Farm Paper has done much to develop business. It has been 
true to its mission. I speak, of course, in behalf of the better class of 
Farm Papers. Like all other industries, there have been and are those 
who have not always pursued the wisest course. The Farm Paper has 
helped in all national movements. You cannot name one great advance 
step made in behalf of American Agriculture that was not championed, 
fostered and furthered by the Agricultural Press. Our Agricultural 
Department at Washington must depend largely upon Farm Be es 
for disseminating information. 

Our great educational institutions in almost every state in the 
Union, dealing with agricultural matters, give Agricultural Papers 
their rightful place. 

The boy on the farm has an ambition. He, like all other boys, 
wants to do something and he needs to be trained to do it in the right 
way. He, too, seeks guidance from the Farm Paper. We of the Agri- 
cultural Press are glad to have gatherings of this kind give a place to 
the Agricultural Press. We want to help in all of these great move- 
ments such as you represent here today—extension work, college work, 
community welfare work. In order that we may have an enlightened 
citizenship, a better national spirit, and a better world to live in. It 
does not mean that we are interested alone in making better farmers, 
but we want to make better citizens—a citizenship tha will wield an 
influence and power for good in this land of ours. 

We need not tell you, it is a fact, nationally known, that among the 
leading business men of our cities are those who came from the farm. 
An investigation in this city a few years ago among one hundred of the 
leading bankers, one hundred leading merchants, one hundred leading 
lawyers, and one hundred leading doctors, etc., etc., revealed the fact 
that from seventy-two to ninety-four percent of the most successful in 
each of these professions and businesses were farm born and farm 
bred. We want our country boys and girls rightly trained, properly 
controlled, that they may become good citizens, wherever they go or 
whatever vocation theirs may be. 

The Farm Paper stands ready to co-operate with you in every 
measure that tends to disseminate worthy information and that helps 
to make community and business life better. We want to shed abroad 
a ray of light that will bring happiness and satisfaction into every 
farmer’s home. It is unfortunate that there has been some competition 
between Government Bulletins and Farm Papers along certain lines. 
The quickest and most direct way of reaching effectively all the farm- 


92 


ers is through the Agricultural Press. I witnessed a most excellent 
demonstration on the cost of milk production in Lansing recently. The 
_ result of the test, which extended over two years, dealt with twenty- 
five farms and something like five hundred cows. The purpose of the 
test was to ascertain the exact cost,of milk production. That is, milk 
only. With the charts and information that were exhibited, we were 
convinced, in fact, fascinated, with the thoroughness of the informa- 
tion that was shown. This test produced some self satisfaction, but so 
far as the public is concerned, the world at large, they know but little 
about it. The plan is to put it in a Bulletin, but that Bulletin cannot be 
issued for several months. They must first get an appropriation big 
enough to cover the cost of production. I don’t know how many they 
will distribute, but I do know this—that if it was given to the Agricul- 
tural Press of the country, millions of farmers would be reading about 
_ it within thirty days, and practical demonstrations are exhibited to us 
might be used immediately by farmers who need just that kind of in- 
formation. There is no other means of quick communication that 
equals the Press of America, and the Farm Paper has its rightful 
place. 

There should be a larger use made by the Government of this 
means of communication—a closer relationship of Farm Papers, Agri- 
cultural Colleges and Government demonstrations— so that the far- 
mers of America might read in their favorite Farm Paper the latest 
developments and most helpful advice. Irrespective of this lack, the 
Farm Papers today give to their readers a larger measure of first 
hand, dependable information than any other class. An investigation 
made by the United States Government a few years ago indicated that 
seventy-four percent of the influence and power belongs to the Agricul- 
tural Press. College Bulletins and other methods of communications 
are way down in the list. 

Every school in America ought to in some form or another teach 
the fundamentals of Agriculture. The Agricultural Publishers Asso- 
ciation, which I have the honor to represent, reaches over 8,000,000 
families per issue. We are interested in everything that has to do with 
the betterment of farm conditions and home life. We are interested in 
better markets, better schools, roads, sanitation. We want the farmer 
to have what he is rightly entitled to, just as good a place to live in, 
and as many things to enjoy, as we have in the city. 

You have the opportunity of getting helpful and needful informa- 
tion for your school work for agricultural instruction, for vocational 
work along Agricultural lines, through the columns of the established 
Agricultural Press; in fact, you can get it no better or more depend- 


93 


able from any other source. You are aware that an appropriation 
passed the Senate the other day for some $7,000,000 for vocational 
education. A part of this is to be used for agricultural purposes. How 
" are we going to use it? Friends, what we need to do is to combine our 
forces and get together on a common ground of intelligence in work 
of this kind. You will find the Agricultural Press ready to support 
your endeavors. I thank you. | 


94 


RURAL EDUCATION IN COOK COUNTY 
EDWIN 'T. TOBIN 


Superintendent of Schools, Cook County, Illinois 


I am going to try to explain in the shortest space of time I can, 
the Cook County system of rural education. I am convinced that 
we have got to introduce into our regular school system that 
reaches all the people, an achievement course. We have in opera- 
tion in Cook County today what we call an achievement course. We 
have always had the academic course. Every school has it, but in the 
public schools of Cook County we have introduced a new course called 
an achievement course. This achievement course is a course in school 
home projects. In other words, we have outlined nine school home 
projects that the children must do; at least must do one each year. In 
other words, we have gone so far as to say that when a child reaches 
the age of ten, as a part of his education in the public schools he must 
take a school home project, one that is definitely outlined and that is 
absolutely controlled by the public school system in the same way that 
the course is reading, writing and arithmetic or any other subject is 
controlled. 
| Now, one of these is a field school home project. I have not 
the time and I am not going to outline that. Another is a garden 
school home project; another is a poultry school home project, another 
is a. cow test, another is a music school home project, and another is a 
business school home project. The point is this: when a child reaches 
the fifth grade or ten years of age, as a part of the education in the 
public school system, he must take one of these courses in order to 
complete the fifth grade. It is absolutely necessary, as I look upon it, 
to teach children to do things just as well as to study dbout things. In 
other words, you can’t study successfully about things unless you are 
doing it at the same time; then to unite the two things together. 

Now, that is the system, that is the course. No course in the 
world will put itself into operation, and that is the greatest fault. We 
have got to change our school system; we have got to change the 
organization of our school system in order to put that achievement 
course or any other in operation. Talking won’t do it. Nothing on 
earth will do it, in my opinion, in a solid way, without the school sys- 
tem being so revolutionized and so organized as to be able to handle 
that outside work, and for that reason we have introduced a country 
life director. In other words, Cook County is divided into five divisions 


95 


of about equal area, of about four townships each, and each of those 
four townships is supplied with what we call a country life director, 
who is the school supervisor or the school superintendent and abso- 
lutely supreme in school matters. He is a school man, to begin with. 
He is county agent there, and he does every bit of work that any other ~ 
county agent ever did, and he ought to do it, because he has got con- 
trol of the schools to do it through. 


Not only that, but he is charged with introducing the recreation 
plan; and he is charged with introducing this achievement course. 
Those are the three duties he has; to introduce the achievement course 
in his division, which means that he must see that every child ten 
years of age or over is takeing one or two of those school home projetes 
each year. That is probably his greatest charge. His second is to 
bring recreation into that community in any shape, manner or form. 
It doesn’t make any difference whether it is an organization of far- 
mers or a Singing school or a spelling school or any other thing. That 
is his business and that is what he is paid for, to bring recreation as 
well as a school home project; and general supervision of the school. 

Now, that is the organization here. These men are on the job all 
the time. They must do these things. If they can’t do them, then 
they must give way to somebody else. I want to say that that is where 
our great trouble comes in, to get men and women that are fit to do 
that kind of work, and their great task is with the teachers, after all, 
because they have got to depend on the school teachers. They have 
got to have school teachers, and they have got to inspire them to do 
those things and to help them do those things. It has been said it is 
an easy task. It is not an easy task. It might be if the teachers were 
trained that way and had the vision. 

Not only is this hard work—the hardest work I can think of is a 
country life director’s commission—but in order to be successful, they 
have to be out day and night. I think every one of them was at the 
meeting last night. They are not here today, because they had call 
meetings today, and tonight and tomorrow night. They are out all the 
time. It is absolutely necessary for them to do that, because you can’t 
get next to the people any other way. You can’t reach this school 
district out thirty or forty miles unless you are there. 

These country life directors work the year around. They are 
tramp teachers, if you like. Their business all the time, and especially 
in the summertime, is to spend all their time in going from farm to 
farm, visiting these boys and girls on their own school home project. 
Of course, they make money out of these projects, and I can tell you, 


96 


hundreds of them have made from two up to three hundred dollars in 
the past year, and that has to be banked, and all that. 

But the one great trouble is to get teachers, and the power that 
those country life directors are given is so tremendous that you would 
be astounded. ‘Any one of them has the right to go anywhere in Amer- 
ica and pick up a teacher that he thinks will do the kind of work ne- 
cessary, and that they want done. I want to say that in spite of that, 
they will tell you even with all the promises in the world made by 
these young ladies and young men who are seeking positions as teach- 
ers, when you put them out: on the job, no matter where they were 
trained, in an agricultural college or not, they won’t do that kind of 
work They want to stick to the books. 

I am going to cite one instance and quit. I think I have over-talk- 
ed now. We have established out here very recently in Montrose, 
which is about twenty miles from here, a rural high school, and I think 
it has elements in it that are simply remarkable, because there are no 
traditions to make it a regular traditional high school. The high 
school district is absolutely dominated by two country life directors, 
Charles W. Farr and Seth Sheppard, who are absolutely imbued with 
these ideas that the high school and every other school should pass on 
the children’s work at home and school home projects. It is up to them 
to get a school teacher. The board of that. particular new high school 
is composed of farmers who are absolutely in sympathy with the work 
of the country life directors, and they give them full control. They 
said, “Go and get a teacher anywhere.” It is necessary for me to 
certify the teachers, and I said, ““Get him anywhere, and any man you 
ask me to certify, I will give him a certificate, I don’t care where you 
got him, out of a factory or off a farm or anywhere else, because I am 
almost convinced that you have got to get a good long way from tra- 
ditional things.” 

They wanted a teacher who would take a self-binder into that 
school room—it is only going to be a one-room country high school; the 
truth is, there are only eighteen boys, chiefly from the farm—and they 
wanted a teacher who would take a self-binder in there and teach these 
children how to take it apart and put it together and how to run it; or 
to take an automobile in there and teach these children how to take 
it apart and put it together; and he would supervise their home proj- 
ects. This teacher is to go to the home regularly and see that the 
thing is carried on right. 

Now, they searched the country to get a teacher for that. They 
finally selected one who is a graduate of an agricultural college and 


OF, 


was recommended, and he came up there. Do you think he would do 
that thing? He promised.: He told these men, “Oh, yes, I am full of 
those visions,” but when he got out there, he didn’t do anything of the 
kind. He rang the bell and those eighteen children would come in 
there every day, and he put the book in front of them and the evening, 
of course, he went away. The country life director was right on the 
job after him all the time, directing and explaining and telling him 
what they wanted. He couldn’t do it. That young man, after two or 
three months, quit and joined the army. 

Now, that is the truth, absolutely, I tell you, it is the work behind 
the thing; itis hard work. It is downright hard work. It is up to them 
to get another man, and they have selected one who worked with 
P. G. Holden in the International Harvester Company for a long time. 
I believe they went there because they thought that this young man 
had received a training along that particular line and probably was 
doing those things. That young man has been on the job two weeks, 
but one thing is sure, he is doing the work in the two weeks that he 
has been there. | 


98 


ORGANIZED LABOR’S POSITION ON VOCATIONAL 
EDUCATION | 


MATTHEW WOLL 


Chairman Committee on Education of the Illinois State Federation of Labor 


Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: 


On the question of education we feel confident there can be no di- 
vision of opinion. We all realize the value of education. Indeed, edu- 
cation is necessary for the perpetuity of our republic. It is not upon 
the question of value that we differ, but differences arise as to who 
shall be. taught, what he shall be taught and who shall do the teaching. 
It is upon that problem that differences of opinion arise, and so we 
view that problem at difference with other groups in society. 

If we look back to history, we find that there was a time when the 
great mass of workers was kept in submission by those who dominated 
the civilization of that time, that it was by fear and prejudice that the 
affairs of nations and the activities of mankind were governed. How- 
ever, as the rural communities became developed into cities and as the 
manfacturing system that we know of today started and brought men 
together, we found a desire for education, a desire for knowledge, and 
as those influences grew, we found the workers demanding a greater 
training. 

Out of that developed what we have today, our public system of 
education; our means of giving education to the people free, that is 
not entirely free; because we must be at expense in some way, but not 
directly by the children or their parents who, for the time being, are 
taking advantage of that educational feature. 

In the vanguard of that development was labor. The workers all 
throughout the period of history, have been ever striving to secure the 
greatest degree possible of knowledge and information, not only for 
themselves but for their children, so that they might be better equip- 
ped to deal with the affairs of life that were to confront them in the 
future. So organized labor, or labor unorganized has at all times been 
in favor of any system which meant higher education for 
great mass of our people, and it is also perhaps strange to know, and 
history also proves that fact, that while labor was endeavoring to 
secure a higher development of themselves and of their children, to 
bring about a greater degree of education for all concerned, there was 
that same small group, influential but very small in number, who exer- 


3B 


cised every power under their control and who exerted every influence 
possible in order to prevent the workers from securing a higher 
education. 

And so we find with the early establishment of our public school 
system that small group of people who had been dominating our indus- 
trial and social life heretofore, using all their power and influence to 
prevent the development of the public school system. However, we 
were fortunate that it has developed to where it is, and we believe that 
our condition of life today and that our state of civilization today is 
largely attributable to the work of the public school system. 

Organized labor today is not yet satisfied with our public school 
system. We call it a free school system. We know that it-is not en- 
tirely free. We know that when children are sent to the schools, we 
must buy books for them. We know we must purchase material in 
order to secure the education that is given to them by the state 
through its schools. We know that the tools essential for education 
are not provided, and it is a considerable factor in many homes to 
provide those tools essential to give the children that necessary equip- 
ment. So we know that the schools as yet are not entirely free, and we 
have fought for years and we will continue to fight for all time to 
come, until our public school system shall be a true democratic public 
school system. 

In this fight to give the children a better education Deine reach- 
ing the years of fourteen or sixteen, we find that same small commer- 
cial group, opposing the interests of the workers at every session of 
the legislature, contending against the providing of the essential 
tools necessary for the securing of that information and knowledge 
for which the public school system is established. And so, too, we 
find in more subtle ways, those same influences trying to prevent our 
school system from being that liberal and democratic institution which 
it ought to be in our republican form of government. We find it, subtle 
as it may be, in our schools, and it is manifested in our system here in 
Chicago, where a small commerical interest, dominating our school 
affairs, is seeking to deny the right of the teachers to associate them- 
selves with the working groups in our communities in order that they 
may get their point of view directly, so that their training will be con- 
fined completely and entirely to the schoolroom and thus not give the 
opportunity for development of the teachers, to give to our children 
the broader views of life. 

Why the separation of the teachers from this great working class 
for which the schools are primarily established? Why deny them the 
right to associate with this great group of workers? Why still that 


100 


fear that the teaching force, not only here but elsewhere, may graft 
some of the ideas, may become more conversant. with some of the 
trials and tribulations of the working class and thereby enable them to 
give that essential training to the children to equip them in that way 
which they ought to be trained in order to meet the problems of life 
after they leave the school room. 


And so you see that labor has constantly and is constantly engaged 
in liberalizing the education of our children. We want to give them 
the best training and best knowledge that is obtainable. We view 
also in our colleges with a degree of alarm the restrictions that are 
placed upon the instructors in those institutions, where those intruc- 
tors are not permitted on the penalty of losing their positions, to give 
to those who are seeking a knowledge, a true idea of economic laws, 
and to destroy and disillusion the old economic fallacies of the past. 
We realize all these restrictions, and it is our constant fight to liberate 
our system of education and give to our children a true knowledge 
and true understanding of affairs of life, so that they may may be 
truly and fairly equipped to meet the problems which they will be 
confronted with in the future. 


Strange as it may seem, with all these activities of organized 
labor to bring to the children of the workers and the great mass of 
people a higher, a better and broader education, yet it goes forth that 
labor is opposed to vocational studies in our public schools. It seems 
to be almost a presumption of fact that organized labor is opposed to 
vocational education. Why that should be, no one of labor under- 
stands, excepting that that small commercial group again is seeking 
to prejudice the views of organized labor in order that the public may 
not give attention to their voice to the same degree that is given to 
that of the small commercial interests. 

Organized labor has never been opposed to vocational training, 
vocational education, in our public schools. Organized labor believes 
that the schoolroom ought to be enlarged to every degree possible in 
order to meet the needs of the children of today who are going to be 
the men and women of tomorrow. We believe that all studies essential 
to the development of mankind and to equip the worker of tomorrow 
and the citizen of tomorrow to properly exercise his civic functions 
and his functions as a worker, ought to be included in the school cur- 
riculum. 

We are not opposed to, indeed, we favor vocational education in our 
- public schools. We believe the worker’s children ought to be afforded 
an opportunity of securing that essential information before entering 


101 


the industries themselves. As far back os 1903, the American Federa- 
tion of Labor took up the proposition of vocational education by op- 
pointing a committee to make a thorough investigation into this sub- 
ject and to see in what manner the workers would be benefitted by 
this new additional study in our schoolrooms. Ever since that time, 
since 1903, the American Federation of Labor, in convention after 
convention, unanimously approved of the idea of including in the school 
curriculum the studies of vocational education, and so through our 
various state organizations and through our international organiza- 
tions, we have endeavored to bring about that ideal of school teaching. 
to our children. ; 

At no time has organized labor opposed vocational education. The 
Smith-Hughes Bill, which has now passed the Senate and House and is 
in conference in order to agree upon a few differences between those 
two legislative bodies, has time and again received the approval of the 
American Federation of Labor, and has received the approval of the 
entire labor movement. 

We believe in vocational education. We desire vocational educa- 
tion, and to prove that that is not merely an expression without any 
sincerity to confirm that opinion, let me direct your attention to the 
fact that for years the various international organizations and nearly 
every international organization of any stability today maintains and 
publishes monthly a trade publication for its members, that all of 
these organizations are devoting considerable space and encouraging 
many of their best experts in their particular crafts to contribute ar- 
ticles on technical matters and of technical value to the general mem- 
bership, and are also imparting to their apprentices fundamental 
knowledge essential to the making of competent and skilled workmen 
in their particular craft. In addition to furthering these vocational 
studies and arousing interest in technical development among its 
adult or journeymen members of its association, they also maintain 
trade schools, not only for the education of their journeymen members 
but also to encourage their apprentices to give more time and study to 
the fundamental principles underlying their various crafts and voca- 
tions. 

There are at least seven international organizations at the present 
time who maintain extensive trade schools for members of their or- 
ganizations, journeymen as well as apprentices, and in nearly every | 
instance, international organizations give credit to those apprentices 
who have gone outside and secured that fundmental training essential 
to the making of good workmen. 

The history of the trade in the movement, its record since 1903, 


102 


, 


evidences the fact that organized labor has at all times realized the 
essential value of vocational education and has responded to that 
thought and ideal in a practical form. 

As I said before, we also favor the introducing of vocational edu- 
cation into our public school system. However we favor that system 
of teaching, we look somewhat with suspicion upon a small group of 
interests who are also interested in bringing about that cort of a con- 
dition, but who contemplates introducing a vocational system of train- 
ing which we know will be detrimental to not only the workers, but to 
society at large. We have given this subject considerable study. We 
have not only gone into the schoolroom affairs, but we have gone into 
the factories, and we view withg reat apprehension what is going on 
in the factory itself, and sometimes and in some places, men will even 
doubt the values of vocational education if the tendencies which are 
so pronounced in the factories are going to continue. 


A review of some of the industries demonstrates that where a 
trade in years gone by has offered opportunitiees of employment more 
than a mere sustenance of physical existence, afforded a comfortable 
livelihood and required a great degree of skill and knowledge, now 
through specialization and sub-specialization, the industry has been 
brought to a point where little or no skill is required. We know 
what specializing is doing. Specializing, if it continues as it is 
going at the present time, will mean that there is little need in the 
future for vocational education, because then a man will be merely a 
cog in the wheel. Of what value is it for us to give time and energy to 
inculeate into minds of our children and to train them into the know- 
ledge of fundamentals underlying industries, if when they go out into 
the practical affairs of life, they can not find the opportunity to exer- 
cise that skill and knowledge which has been given to them through the 
schoolroom? 


And so we find many industries today where the employment is 
purely automatic and where the man or boy, whoever it may be, is 
fastened to a machine which he operates from day to day by merely a 
few muscular actions. Truly, if the vocational education is essential, 
we know from our observations of all factors in industries that indus- 
tries must likewise be regulated, and if vocational education is to be of 
value to this nation and to our people, then industries must likewise he 
fitted to give opportunitiese to the children we are going to turn vut to 
meet the affairs of life in years to come. 


It isn’t the problem simply of imparting this knowledge to the 
children, it is likewise a problem of looking into our industries to see 


103 


that the opportunities are given to our children for a fair and comfort- — 
able livelihood. Of what interest is it to many workers today to enter 
into their factory or workrooms, to stand from early morning until 
late at night, being but a part of a machine, going through a few mus- 
cular actions without having any part at all in the product which the 
work has produced. The identity of the worker in many industries is 
almost entirely isolated from the finished product to which his labor 
has contributed, and so it is not surprising that in some circles of labor 
there should be opposition. 

Trades we know of where skilled workmen were required in the 
past are entirely destroyed today, and with the inventive genius of our 
people, with the great development of mechanical contrivances and de- 
vices, we know that many other skilled trades of today in a few years 
to come will be counted among the unskilled classes. 

And so you see, the probem is a large one. It is a vital one, and it . 
goes far beyond the schoolroom. It goes likewise into the factory 
itself, and it is through our organizations that we hope to bring these 
two problems into unification. It is through our trade union move- 
ment that we hope to give to the child in the school room the essential 
and fundamental knowledge that is required in the shop, and through 
our trade organizations to so regulate the production in the shop itself 
as will make that knowledge mein in the schoolroom of value to 
the children themselves. 

Realize the importance that labor plays in this proposition. Real- 
ize that there is practically no other agency capable or competent to 
meet that situation unless we are willing to accept an entirely different 
conception of our individual system of government and adopt a more 
parental form of organization for society. Until that time comes it 
is for the trade union movement, it is for the workers not only to 
encourage a vocational education, but through their combined efforts 
and through their combined strength, also endeavor to regulate condi- 
tions in the workroom so that the time that the boy or girl may spend 
in the school will be of value to them. | 

It would be the most gigantic fraud for this nation or for this 
community or any community to ask of the children to give additional 
time to the school rooms, to give them training in additional studies 
when after having done so, that training and those studies would be 
practically of no value whatsoever. 

And then, too, while favoring vocational education, we are some- 
what apprehensive that the training itself may become of a special- 
ized character and that the training may take that course of seeking 
to supply only the higher skilled crafts and by overcrowding the 


104 


market in that particular craft, bring down the wage and economic 
condition of the worker. We feel that if we are to encourage voca- 
tional education, we feel that if we are going to give that assistance to 
the pubile school system, that that system ought not be allowed to be 
diverted into channels whereby the economic depression upon the 
workers will be made even more severe than it is today. We believe 
that if it is to be a public institution, it ought to be for the public 
benefit, and we know that whatever depresses the great mass of peo- 
ple, the workers who are practically the great mass of our communi- 
ties and government, what ever makes economic pressure upon them 
greater surely is not of a public benefit, but on the contrary is of a 
distinct detriment and harm. 

And so we feel that with this vocational education being taken up 
in our various school rooms, it must be dependent upon the supply of 
labor available in any particular industry and that it will not do to 
train the youth of today for an occupation of tomorrow which is 
already overcrowded, because it will be of no service whatever to the 
youth himself and will only pit the youth against the father and make 
life for all more unbearable and more difficult and the task more hard. 
And so we feel that the public school matter on vocational subjects 
should at least be correlated with that thought of not overcrowding the 
labor market and giving us the opportunity of using our public school 
system for the benefit of the great mass of our people. 

We hesitate a great deal to give our approval to the arguments 
some of the commercial groups have made for the necessity of voca- 
- tional education in our public schools. We dissent entirely from their 
view on this particular point. They tell us vocational education is 
essential in our school rooms because the great mass of children leave 
the schools as quickly as they possibly can, that they are no longer 
satisfied with the studies that they have been receiving in our elemen- 
tary schools, that many of the minds of our children are of a mechan- 
ical kind and that they are not in a position, unfortunately, I presume 
physically, to learn to receive knowledge in abstract form; that it isn’t 
by books they can be educated, but only by the machine itself. 

We dissent entirely from that viewpoint. We know that many 
children leave the schoolroom as quickly as they possibly can. We 
know, too, that the child is not a voluntary factor in that matter. We 
know that the child isn’t a voluntary agent. We know that parents in 
many instances are compelled to take their children from the school- 
rooms, not because they are lacking in faith in the studies of our 
schools, but because the economic pressure is so great that they are 
using the services of their children to bring in a greater sum to make 


105 


both ends meet. That is the cause, and that is the reason many of our 
school children are forced to leave our schoolrooms and enter into em- 
ployment in our industries. 

Let me say to you, men and women, that in the heart and in the 
mind of every parent of the workers there is that desire to give to his 
or her child the same education, the same opportunities, that there is 
in the hearts and minds of those of you who may have children at 
home. There is that same feeling to give them the best equipment 
within their means and power, so that they may be able to go through 
life with greater ease and comfort than they themselves have been 
allowed or permitted to go. There is that same feeling in the heart of 
every parent of a child, whether it be of a worker or of an employer, 
but it is simply that great economic pressure, that great economic 
determination which forces the parent to take the child out of the 
schoolroom and send him into the factory in order to relieve that eco- 
nomic pressure upon all concerned. | 

Do we need ask for proof of that? Let us simply look on the 
records of the Boston investigation, where we found when free text- 
books were introduced, when only that slight economic pressure was 
reduced, the attendance of the school children increased enormously ; 
and some other investigations verify that same fact, and so when we 
are told that the child leaves the schoolroom because there isn’t the 
vocational training, because the abstract method is not desirable for all 
the children or desired by the parents then we know the argument for 
vocational education is not marked with sincerity but is marked more 
with a desire to bring into our schools an apprenticeship system and to | 
train the youth in the schools so he may be exploited the following day 
in our factories. 

Against that we are opposed, because we believe that that sort of 
education, we believe that that sort of a system is a system of exploita- 
tion against humanity itself and not deserving of any consideration by 
a democracy or a republic as we have here today. 

I don’t know that I need say much more as to the attitude of or- 
ganized labor upon this problem. We are heartily in accord with it. 
We want, in connection with the subject of vocational education, to 
have the understanding that vocational education shall be vocational 
education, that it shall not be merely a specialized training of the youth 
to equip him for a highly specialized industry for tomorrow, rendering 
more oppressive the conditions of our workers. We are also apprehen- 
sive as to the introduction of other developments into our public school 
system. We are confronted with many problems today in our school 
idea. Only here recently in the city of Chicago we now find it essential 


106 


to make soldiers and military men of our youth. I presume in connec- 
tion with that subject we will now divert our idea of vocational educa- 
tion. Instead of training the man for a highly specialized industry, we 
will train him in the methods of trench-digging and in the making of 
munitions, and thus be prepared for all time to come, not only to safe- 
guard our borders, but to conquer any one that we may desire to; and 
so we are bringing in all of these problems, militarism, and that, I 
presume, is vocational education for the making of munitions and 
trench-digging. 

Against that form of vocational education or against that ideal we 
are strongly and emphatically opposed. We believe the ideal upon 
which our public system ought to be maintained and ought to be re- 
tained and if need be, extended to make it apply to our conditions in 
times of today, by giving that broad general knowledge of vocational 
education which now is denied to the children and to the youth who 
must enter into the factory of tomorrow. We realize, even in the spe- 
cialized industry of today, that the fundamental understanding of the 
principles governing that avocation of life or that trade would be help- 
ful not only to the youth himself, but to the industry as a whole; that 
an understanding of the fundamental principles underlying his par- 
ticular work would make his work more interesting and bring with it 
a better liking to that form of occupation; and would also induce him 
to think further and to develop further whereby he might branch out 
into some other industry or some other work. 

We are agreeable, we favor, indeed, we urge that sort of education. 
We believe, too, that in this vocational education should be included a 
study of science underlying the various industries and ‘trades and occu- 
pations, and so too, do we believe there ought to be that steady, sober 
responsibility of one worker to the other, and the workers to the indus- 
try and to society as a whole. We feel that with the great problems 
involved on this question, the regulation of the factory, as well as the 
vocational studies in the schools, collective bargaining and trade organ- 
izations among the employes is an essential factor and rather more 
essential than has been exercised by some of our school authorities to 
divide the workers and to destroy the teaching forces. To bring about 
a complete isolation of all of this great individual factor in this great 
group of industry is harmful and will not bring the result which is 
desired by every one who has given this subject fair and honest and 
sympathetic consideration. | 

' Tam not going to take up any more of your time except to read to 
you, in order not to leave simply my impressions with you as stating 
the position of organized labor, but I want to read to you briefly the 


107 


declaration of the American Federation of Labor on this subject, 
adopted at the convention a year ago; and then, too, briefly to read you 
‘the declarations of the Illinois State Federation of Labor upon this 
particular subject, to prove to you that labor itself not only is in favor 
of this sort of education but is anxious for it. 

There is one point that I came pretty near overlooking, and that is 
really the one upon which there has been a great deal of controversy, 
and that is as to the management or control of these studies. There 
has been a group in our society who have felt that to carry out these 
vocational studies in a practical and efficient manner, those studies 
must be under the control of a separate and distinctive board of man- 
agement. We who have given this subject deep consideration, who 
realize the value of education whether it be cultural, academic or voca- 
tional, realize the danger in separating our system of teaching and of 


school studies. We realize the danger of dividing the authorities in © 


educational matters. We realize the danger of establishing two dis- 
tinctive systems of education, wherein that same group who, as his- 
tory proves, has always endeavored to suppress knowledge from the 
workers in order to keep them confined and restricted—we realize that 
that system of education, vocational, may be looked upon as the prime 
and the most important system of education in our community. We 
are not prepared to say that that is true. We still cling to the idea, 
and I think truthfully and rightly so, that the cultural education which 
will train men for citizenship is the higher and the greater education 
essential to the welfare of our nation and of our country, and so we 
feel that to divide the school authorities and to establish two systems 
of education in our communities or states or national government 
would be a distinctive harm to the communities and to the nation at 
large, in that it will create in the minds of the parents as well as in the 
minds of the children the belief that possibly the higher of those two 
is vocational education rather than the other, the elementary studies 
which are essential to the learning of all. 

And so we feel, too, that with the dividing of our educational sys- 
tem into two groups or two distinctive systems, there will come that 
confusion between authorities in school matters themselves which can 
only result in turmoil and strife and friction, to the detriment of the 
school child, to the detriment of the teaching force, to the detriment of 
the school system as a whole, and to the detriment of the people as a 
whole. 

And so we are opposed unqualifiedly to a dual system of adminis- 
tering the affairs of our schools. We want all of our school matters 
under the direction of one authority and we want even more; we want 


108 


that school board authority directly responsible to the people them- 
. selves. (Applause.) - 

Feeling, as we do, that the educational system is perhaps the most 
important system for the carrying on, for the perpetuity of our gov- 
ernment, we feel that that system ought to be made most responsive to 
the people themselves. _We find even now ideas prevailing to reduce 
the control of the people even further than it has been reduced from 
them at the present time. We are opposed to those developments. We 
are opposed to those ideas and tendencies. We want the school board 
authorities an elective board, made directly responsible to the people 
and thus give the people an opportunity, year after year or time after 
time to express their views on school matters and to have our school 
system run from the bottom up and not autocratically, as it is being 
done, from the top, and the great mass of people compelled to submit 
to it as we have been constantly in all these years. (Applause.) 

But to read the report of the American Federation of Labor upon 
this subject a year ago: I will simply read you the recommendations of 
the committee, which were adopted: “We highly commend the Execu- 
tive Council for its thorough analysis of the educational needs and 
problems confronting the workers today. Prompted by this analysis 
of the Executive Council and by the observations, opinions and conclu- 
sions herein expressed by our committee, we recommend the concur- 
rence in the several recommendations of the Executive Council, noted 
in its report, with the following additional requirements: 

“First: that in approving industrial education, equal attention 
should be given to the general educational studies and requirements of 
the school children. Your committee believes the latter of greater im- 
portance to the future welfare of the workers than the former instruc- 
tions. 

“Second: that industrial education shall include the teaching of 
sciences underlying the various industries and industrial pursuits be- 
ing taught, and their historical, economic and social bearing. 

“Third: that all courses in industrial education shall be adminis- 
tered by the same board of education or trustees administering the 
general education, and that no federal legislation on this subject shall 
receive the approval of the American Federation of Labor which does 
not require a unit system of control over all public school studies, gen- 
eral and industrial. We recommend that the Smith-Hughes Bill be 
endorsed by this convention, but that such approval is dependent upon 
the amending of the bill so as to eliminate the optional system that the 
states accepting the terms of this bill shall be required to comply 


109 


with the unit system of control. The bill should also conform to the 
several rocommendations herein submitted. 

“Fourth: that the Department of Labor at Washington be re- 
quested and urged to co-operatae with the Executive Council in con- 
ducting a thorough investigation into existing vocational or industrial 
schools and systems of industrial education in full, in order to deter- 
mine wherein such teaching has benefitted or harmed the workers; 
that the survey shall also include a careful investigation into existing 
shop practices and conditions in order to determine what indutries are 
lacking in trained and experienced workers; such investigation also to 
determine the number of workers who are trained and experienced and 
who are out of the employment due to their inability to secure employ- 
ment because there are more trained workers in that particular trade 
or vocation than the industries employ.”’ 

In that connection, let me say to you that the Labor Department . 
did endeavor, during the past year, to make somewhat of a survey of 
trade conditions prevailing in industries, and it may be of surprise to 
you to know that the Labor Department in its report states that it has 
been unable to secure the co-operation of the employers to give that 
desirable information whereby an examination or a careful survey of 
industrial conditions may be obtained; so when we get to the question 
of who is really opposing a development of our public school system of 
education, you will not find on that side of opposition, labor, organized, 
or unorganized, but you will find it on the other side in the affirmative, 
fighting to maintain a rightful system of education, one that will be of 
help to the communities and to every one concerned in it. 

Now as to the report of the Illinois State Federation of Labor, 
adopted one year ago on this subject, it is equally comprehensive and 
clear and definines the position of organized labor, I believe, in a form 
that can not be subject to doubt or criticism by any fair minded wo- 
man or man. 

“Prompted by the observations, opinions and conclusions ex- 
pressed in a foregoing report, we recommend the enactment of state 
legislation which shall include the following requirements: 

“First, compulsory school attendance of all children between the 
ages of seven and sixteen ; 

‘Second, (a) Authorizing the board of education of all school 
districts in the state to provide instruction in vocational subject; (b) 
any school district of this state establishing or having established or 
maintaining vocational instruction in the industrial arts and in agri- 
culture and commerce, shall receive increased financial assistance from 
the state; (c) all courses in vocational education shall be administered 


110 


in each school district by the same board of education or trustees that 
administer the general educational courses; (d) in school districts 
maintaining vocational teaching, there shall be appointed by the board 
of education or trustees, an advisory committee on vocational educa- 
tion, each committee to consist of an equal number of employers of 
labor and of persons directly associated and connecting with bona fide 
labor organizations; (e) vocational instruction shall include the teach- 
ing of sciences underlying the various industries and industrial pur- 
suits being taught, and their historical, economic and social bearing ; 
(f) that whenever any employer engaged in any business whatsoever 
employs any person under eighteen years of age, and whenever the 
service of such employe terminates for any reason whatsoever, the 
employer shall report such employment or termination of employment 
at once to the school authorities of the school district, giving name and 
address, age of such employe, description of character of work to be 
performed or having been performed with reference to the skill and 
by such employe while in the service of such employer particularly 
knowledge which may be required by the employe in such employment, 
rate of wages paid, hours of service per day and such other informa- 
tion as may be required by the school authorities of the school district 
in which such employment becomes or has been operated. The school 
authorities should also be empowered to require such additional infor- 
mation to the employment of such person or persons any time during 
such period of employment.” 


Then we provide for annual reports and investigation into some of 
the private institutions which at the present time are exploiting the 
workers’ children and the workers themselves. 


These reports, in addition to the impressions I have endeavored to 
leave with you, I think prove conclusively the favorable attitude of the 
American labor movement on this question of vocational education, and 
I think ought to remove, if there may be, any doubt as to the position 
of organized labor on this subject. We agree with all as to the value 
of education. We want to bring home to our children the greatest 
degree of training and education and knwledge that is possible for us 
to give to them, to give to them the greatest training possible, to equip 
them in the fullest manner conceivable to meet their affairs of life as 
workers and as citizens in their future to come. 

Your Chairman, in opening the meeting, happily referred to the 
legislation fostered and encouraged by organized labor. That is true 
not only in Illinois, it is true in every state of this union. It is true in 
our national government itself. Organized labor is not imbued with 


UE 


a selfish idea, is not imbued with selfish motives. We realize the neces- 
sity not yet seen the light of combining with his fellow workmen, equal 
protection that we do to our own membership. We want your co-opera- 
tion in this plan of vocational education that organized labor has fav- — 
ored. We ask your co-operation because we believe it is a program de- 
serving the sympathetic support and encouragement of every man and 
woman interested in giving to the child the best possible opportuni- 
ties for their life to come. 


112 


TRADE AGREEMENTS 
CHARLES A. PROSSER 


Dunwoody Institute, Minneapolis 


Sometime ago a commercial traveler in the city of Atlanta had 
occassion to get change for a five dollar bill. He went to the corner 
hard by and found there a darky in tattered clothes, with a straw hat 
on his head, down through whose torn brim the southern sun was shin- 
ing. Rushing up he said, “Sambo, won’t you please give me change for 
five dollars?” Sambo took off the old straw hat and bowed low and said 
“Boss, I thanks you for the compliment, but I am very sorry to have to 
tell you that I haven’t got the change.” 
I thank the Chairman of the afternoon for his compliment, but I 
am sorry to say there isn’t a word of truth in it. 
Coming so soon after the exposition of the position of the Ameri- 
can Federation of Labor with regard to vocational education, I feel 
that the most fitting thing we could do would be to adjourn or to turn 
the meeting into a discussion of the many points that Mr. Woll has 
raised. Indeed, I think I am in the same position as Mr. Johnson, a 
Chicago gentleman who went down to Memphis to speak at a banquet. 
_ The program was crowded with many speaker.s About eleven-thirty 
o’clock the toastmaster arose and saidfi ““Mr. Johnson of Chicago will 
now give his address.” Mr. Johnson arose and said, “Mr. Toastmaster, 
my address is 918 Jackson Boulevard, Chicago, Good-night.” That 
might be a fitting thing for me to do. 
I have had distributed through the audience this afternoon a 
little pamphlet under the title, “Trade Understanding of Vocational 
Education in Minneapolis.” I do not know at this moment how much 
use I will make of the document, but if you will thumb it through you 
will find there are four parts. The first contains the customary fore- 
word, without which no document is now complete, in which I have 
-made some explanations of the different parts of the manuscript. The 
second has to do with the relation of the school to apprenticeship 
training. The third has to do with trade understandings made by the 
Minneapolis survey. The fourth contains forms of contract of appren- 
ticeship for use between employers and employes. 

I think, Mr. Chairman, that the first thing I shall do is to submit 
the document with leave to print. I shall during my talk make refer- 
ence from time to time to the material contained in this pamphlet. I 


118 


assume that you may find time in the midst of a busy life to read it 
sometime, and I assume I will be in a position to refer everybody in the 
room to such parts as I expect to discuss. 

We held a survey in Minneapolis in 1915 which took about eight 
months for its completion. It was not a full school survey, but was a 
survey entirely for purposes of vocational education. It was somewhat 
different from most of the surveys made in this country. Most of 
them have focused their attention upon figures, upon statistics, upon 
diagrams of situations in terms of quantities of workers and values of 
production. This survey focused its attention almost entirely upon the 
attitude of employer, employe and school toward their large and joint 
task of preparing the workers of the future for their various employ- 
ments. It may be said that the ordinary survey is perhaps best repre- 
sented by a column of sttistics and a typewriter, whereas possibly if 
the Minneapolis survey had any value at all, it may be said it was 
represented best by a conference. During the progress of the survey 
there were 186 different conferences held with employers and em- 
ployes, sometimes in separate groups, but usually in groups where both 
were represented. 

The point I want to make is this, because I think it has some value 
for our consideration of the whole question of surveys. I do not be- — 
lieve myself at the present time that statistical figures, painting dole- 
ful pictures of what may be the situation twenty-five or fifty years 
from now, have very large help or guidance for us in dealing with the 
practical situation as to how we may take care of this poor little pitiful 
child called vocational education, which has been laid on the doorstep 
of the American schoolmaster. 

To my mind, the largest problem at issue is this, What is the 
attitude of the community as a whole? What is the attitude of the 
employers of the city? How far are they willing to go in the support 
of any scheme or schemes of practical training? How far are they 
willing to put themselves to any trouble or expense in co-operating 
with any scheme of vocational education which may be at the present 
time or at any time in the future, suggested? What is the attitude of 
organized labor in the community Does it believe in vocational educa- 
tion? How far is it willing to support'a program? What are the 
things it objects to in the programs that have thus far been started 
in this country? How far is organized labor willing to make any sac- 
rifice in order to co-operate with the schools in dealing with this new 
and very difficult problem. 

To my mind, that is the nub of the whole matter, and any survey 
of any community which fails to get to the bottom of that question or 


114 


at least fails after having made only a mediocre attempt to get-to the 
bottom of it, is hardly worth the paper which it takes to report its 
findings and recommendations. At least, that was our attitude in 
Minneapolis with regard to the problem. 

Now, folks are queer people. They will stand aloof from each 
other and criticise each other, largely without any knowledge of the 
real attitude of those whom they oppose. One of the largest services 
which we school men can render, whether it be during the progress of 
a formal survey or in the ordinary discharge of our humble duties, is 
to bring together these misunderstanding and conflicting interests, 
quoting to them at the same time, “come now, and let’s reason to-. 
gether.” 

The trade understandings which have come in Minneapolis have 
come through an attempt to carry out that scriptural injunction. It is 
a difficult matter at the start to get employers and representatives of 
the unions together in the same room for conference. Minneapolis is 
known all over this country as a very much “wide open” town. The 
trades are not very strongly organized. Collective bargaining, outside 
of one or two trades and those not very large trades, is entirely un- 
known. They haven’t the habit of getting together, of talking things 
over, of making any arrangements whatever with regard to the trade. 

But this is what we said to both employers and employes: ‘“‘We 
want to bring home to you employers and we want to bring home to 
you trade unionists, a sense of your ancient responsibility for the fut- 
ure welfare of the workers in the craft who are to come after you. 
The school is uttterly helpless unless somehow and someway, it can, 
through arousing that sense of responsibility on your part, get you to 
talking together, and somehow and someway, act together.” 

I must say for the credit of the employers and of the trade union- 
ists of Minneapolis that after the ice was once broken, they managed 
to have a lot of very profitable conferences with each other. They met 
-as gentlemen and they parted as gentlemen. There wasn’t one angry 
word or one bitter controversy in all that time. They differed from 
each other and they differed frankly and boldly and squarely, but 
they stated their differences as gentlemen should. 

Here was an employer who was running what is called a lock-out 
shop, a shop where a union man was not allowed to work. Over on 
this side was the business agent of the union, who had been figthing 
this employer for years, trying to break into his shop. Each had 
played every angle of the game to get the advantage of the other. Yet 
those men finally come to a meeting of minds in regard to what was 


115 


needed in the training of workers and the part which the school should 
play in the attempt to carry out their ideas. d 

There were other things done by the survey, but in my opinion 
that was the largest service which was rendered. 

Now, I am not pretending to you that there aren’t some weak spots 
in the situation in Minneapolis. We haven’t a perfect situation. We 
have done some things which I shall attempt to describe. Some few 
things I pride myself we have done well. With some other things we 
have failed miserably. | 

The poor schoolmaster, whether he be employed by a regular 
school system or by Dunwoody Institute, is standing squarely between 
two fires, where he is bound to get hurt from time to time and where 
erable amount of hair and teeth. I think the business of the school is 
to stand squarely between the employer on the one side and the union 
on the other, seeking always and everywhere that which is for the best 
good of the child and the worker, confident in his heart that that which 
is for the best good of the child and the worker will in the last analysis 
and in terms of years, be the best thing for the trade unionists on the 
one side and for the employer on the other. 

That isn’t a very easy position to take and maintain in a city of 
four hundred thousand people, with the ebb and flow of that never | 
ceasing conflict between capital and labor that perhaps will never cease 
until the millennium arrives and the lion and the lamb lie down to- 
gether. It isn’t an easy proposition. No matter what you do, you will 
be criticised. No matter what you do, it will be said, “It is done for 
this interest or for that interest.” Sometimes the employers are mad 
at us because they think we have done things of which the unions 
approve but of which they disapprove. Sometimes a union becomes 
bitter against us because it believes there are some things we are doing 
which we should not have done. So I suppose we will have to do as the 
Episcopalians do, cry out from time to time. “‘We have left undone the 
things we should have done and we have done the things which we 
should not have done.” 

But I think we have started the habit of trade agreements and 
trade understandings on a basis which I hope will improve from year 
to year. Why trade understandings at all? Why not take the school 
to some remote hill and do what we have done too often as schoolmen, 
draw the curtains and say, “Our job is to take care of these people 
who as to,us and let industry go hang. It is nobody’s business but 
~ our own.” That has always been our poilcy. 

One by one all the agencies for educating our youth have placed 
old duties on the back of the schools. In the long sweep of the centu- 


116 


ries in which the home and the church or the farm or the school have 
been shifting the responsibility of training youth upon the school- 
masters there have been two tremendous tendencies manifested. One 
has been the tendency on the part of all other agencies to throw the 
old job on the shoulders of the public school system, and the other has 
been for the schoolmaster to rush into that task where angels might © 
fear to tread and saying, “This is my task. It is nobody else‘s busi- 
ness; let me alone.” 

Instead of the home and the church and the farm and the factory 
and the shop and the business house co-operating in the education of 
of our boys and girls, they have been getting farther and farther apart. 

The proposition for trade understandings rests on a number of, 
to my mind, fundamental propositions. It is absolutely impossible for 
the school to solve the problem of industrial education alone. It doesn’t 
know the job. The school is making a product which is to be consumed 
by industry ; consumed in the future I hope in a better way, but never- 
theless consumed. It is the business of the school to have due regard 
all the time to the demands of the customer that must be met in the 
future. 

It is absolutely impossible for the school to handle the task unless 
it can get onto a working basis with industry. Finally, the school at 
bottom is a manufacturing establishment. Every school is a manufac- 
turing establishment; but industrial and trade schools of all kinds, 
day, part-time, dull season or evening, are manufacturing plants. 
What do they do? They take the youth with his untrained mind and 
untrained hand, and they give him an awakened mind and a skilled 
hand. But the school’s task is only partially completed when it opens 
its doors and takes children, when it gives those children a certain 
amount of training. To my mind the most important task, is to be 
certain that the school completes its job by providing for the proper 
placing, the advantageous entrance and further training of those chil- 
dren after they enter industry. In other words the school like any 
other productive industry must place its product. 

It was on that basis that we attempted to deal with this problem 
in Minneapolis. Our efforts failed sometimes, disastrously failed. 
There were humiliating failures and experiences. Nevertheless I think 
the public schools of the city and Dunwoody Institute, had their eyes 
fixed all the time on the one goal of selecting the proper people to be 
trained, of giving them ‘the very best training of which they were 
capable, of providing for their proper place and further education 
after they entered upon employment. 

There were certain things upon which both employers and em- 


117 


ployes agreed fully when they mét in conference. They said that mod- 
ern industry is so specialized that there is no such thing left in it as 
the training of the worker beyond the one specialized task upon which 
he is engaged. That task is so highly specialized that he will learn it 
in a Short time, and when he has acquired it, he does nothing else, but 
the one thing over and over again. 

Second, the old institution of apprenticeship has gone out with the 
specialized machine. There is today in the city of Minneapolis practic- 
ally no such thing as apprenticeship. The census reported about three 
hundred people enrolled as apprentices. By the ancient definition of 
apprentice, there are somewhere in the neighborhood of forty-five 
or fifty people today who could, by the exercise of the widest charity, 
be called apprentices, and none of them are indentured, because that 
written contract of indenture has absolutely disappeared. 

Third, industry is incapable of training its workers beyond the de- 
mands of this one specialized task. Fourth, there is still need for the 
training, all-around training of superior men for leadership. There is 
need even under the distressing conditions of modern production, for 
revival of apprenticeship, for a small and highly selected group of 
the young workers who are to be all-around workmen in these fac- 
tories. Such all-around workmen have practically disappeared today. 

Employers and employes were agreed on this proposition: If a 
day school were to give a group of boys the kind of training they 
ought to have, those boys would after a while come out on top of the 
business as leaders. They now work their way up from the bottom by 
sheer force of their better training and skill. 

These employers and employes believed without exception in the 
evening school. If aman who is employed during the day had a chance 
to go back to evening school and that evening school taught him 
through a series of unit courses, meeting his needs in his daily work, 
he would become after a while a fully equipped workman and leader. 

Recognizing the necessity under modern conditions, of specializa- 
tion both employers and employes said in conference that they regarded 
the day and evening school as being the only way in which to protect 
and safeguard the workers against this tremendous minute specializa- 
tion so characteristic of modern production. 

I want at this point to take up one thing that Dr. Snedden spoke of 
from this platform. I dislike to disagree with Dr. Snedden. He was 
my beloved teacher at Columbia University. He was my superior of- 
ficer when he was commissioner of education in Massachusetts and I 
was the deputy. There is no man in education in this country whom I 
so greatly admire particularly do I admire the profound ability which 
he has to think his way through things. } 


I agree with all that he has to say with regard to the conditions in 
modern industry. I think that we schoolmasters must keep constantly 
before us the fact that industry is specialized. The boy in your indus- 
trial school is going to work at only one task. Don’t forget that these 
men who come to you at the evening school are today working at the 
ne task. 

The place where I think Dr. Snedden needs to be checked up, with 
ali my admiration for him, is this: I do not believe that we need to 
bother ourselves today about the proposition of preparing people in 
these very short courses of-two or three weeks for entrance upon in- 
dustrial life. My opinion is that that is the business of the employer 
and should remain his business. (Applause). 

For a long time to come, at least, and I do not today see the end of 
that time, all the public funds we will be able to acquire for the support 
of vocational education, can well be devoted, and more than all we get 
will have to be devoted, to the other and larger and more important 
task of broadening out through this continuous succession of short unit 
courses, the evening school man after he has gone to work and comes 
back to the school for training. 

My opinion is that any other conception of vocational education 
today is narrowing and will prevent us from discharging what I be- 
lieve is our larger and more important task. I say that with the largest 
amount of respect for Dr. Snedden. I have no doubt if he was here he 
would agree with every word that I have uttered. 

Not one of the men met in the 186 conferences held by the survey 
in Minneapolis: not an employer in the city, not a trade unionist in the 
city, had one good word to say for the proposal to 'take the novice off the 
street and make him into a mechanic through evening school instruc- 
tion. I think the biggest piece of nonsense, if you will pardon me for 
saying it in such emphatic form, that is abroad in this country today 
is the proposal to take public money and use it through the avenue of 
an evening school for the purpose of making a dry goods clerk into a 
machinist, with fifty nights of evening school instruction in the course 
of a winter. I think it is a criminal use of public money, and I think 
when schoolmasters stand for such a plan they are choosing the path 
of least resistance? 

There was a darky sitting on the top of a rail fence. He had a 
hickory pole in his hand. On the end of the pole was a string. On the 
end of the string was a hook. On the end of the hook was no bait, but 
the hook was in a mud puddle. A white man came along and said, 
“What are you doing?” He says, “I am fishing.” ‘You know there 
aren't any fish in there.” ‘Boss, I know there ain’t, and there never 


B19 


was and there ain’t never going to be any fish.” Then what are you 
fishing there for?” “‘Boss, because it’s easy.” 

That is the reason the schoolmaster fishes in the puddle of the 
novices with evening school classes, which he calls trade classes. It is 
because he hasn’t acquired the courage and willingness to get in touch 
with industry, to realize that the workers there are chained to the spe- 
cializing machine, and to go to the trouble of playing his part in open- 
ing up the avenue for advancement for these workers by short cut 
courses in an evening trade extension school. 

You can dismiss the whole proposition as an absurdity. Fifty 
nights of evening school instruction in one hundred hours. Divide 
that by eight and you have got tweleve days. Do you mean to tell me 
that anybody can learn machine shop practice in twelve days? You 
can teach a man to operate a simple lathe, after a fashion. I grant, so 
can the industry. Evening school money needs to be spent for the 
man already at work on a lathe, on things that he cannot learn in the 
shop. . 

We had a bitter fight in Indiana about the clause in the state law 
which restricted the use of evening school money to trade extension 
course. I wrote that clause, and I am prouder of it than of anything I 
ever did, because I believe it to be sound. I wrote the clause in the 
Smith-Hughes Bill which says that not one dollar of federal money 
shall be spent on evening classes for any other purpose than trade 
extension courses for those already employed. 

If you want to open up some social and recreational centers, if you 
have a small manual training outfit and you want to give fellows a 
chance to make some mission furniture for their own homes “well and | 
good’’, don’t call it industrial and trade education, call it manual train- 
ing, call it recreation. 

These employers and employes looked upon the part time class as 
a most excellent plan. They also believe the dull season class for the 
building trades was a good thing. The dull season class takes the ap- 
prentice from the plastering, stonecutting, carpentry, plumbing, 
steamfitting or bricklayers trades. It trains them in the winter 
months, January and February, in Minneapolis when work in these 
trades in suspended. 

It was when we got down to day school that we began to run into 
trouble in our conferences. Employers didn’t object to the proposition 
of a day school. They weren’t very enthusiastic about it. They point- 
ed 'to the manual training that had been going on in the city, excellent 
manual training too, by the way. They said it had no industrial signi- 
ficance. They said, ‘““‘We don’t believe that is going to give us what we 


120 


ought to have in industry.” The unions agreel with this. However, 
they feared the day school for other reasons. They said, “There have 
been a lot of fly-by-night industrial trade schools established in this 
country under private auspices that have been established for money- 
making, for sinister purposes.” They pointed out schools where you 
can learn to be an electrician in six weeks or a plumber in ten weeks 
or a printer in four weeks if you pay an eighty dollar fee at the start. 
They said, ““We are opposed to that proposition. This objection we met 
_ by showing that so far as the day school was concerned nothing less 
than two-year courses were contemplated. The unions said in the 
second place that they feared the productive shop. This point we 
argued over and over again. You know those words, “‘productive shop,” 
have a big sound. If you exercise your imagination, you can just see 
tons of goods running out of back doors of an industrial school that 
have been manufactured by the labor of pupils. 

The unions said, “We want to know something about this produc- 
tive shop, because we are bothered about it.” “Well,” we said, “do you 
believe that the boy ought to spend at least half his time in actual 
shop work in the school?” The said, ‘“‘Anything else is foolishness. 
Sure, he has got to get the skill down in his hands at the same time he 
is getting his book work. ” “All right; you believe that, do you?” 
“Yes.” “Then he must work on something, must he not?” “Yes.” 

- “Do you want to have the real thing or an imitation of the real 
thing? Do you want this boy to do a piece of work under the instruc- 
tion of a man who knows shop production, or do you want him to work 
a little piece of iron or wood that has been prepared by somebody for 
his little exercise and make a dumb-bell or a tabouret for sister’s par- 
lor?” “We want the first; never the latter.” 

“Will you gentlemen agree that it would be a waste of public mon- 
ey to use material for exercise work or for real work and then, when 
you get the article produced wreck it and throw it out on the waste 
pile? That would be a waste of natural resources. It would be a 
waste of public money.” They said, “We will agree absolutely that 
that is true.” “All right; what is your trouble, then ?”’ 

“Why,” they said, “every time a dollar’s worth of that sort of 
thing is made, it takes the bread out of somebody’s mouth.” We found 
the employers in a few trades raising just the same issue. That was 
particularly true of the printing trade. The printers have always 
looked upon the printing done by the public schools in the past as 
something which legitimately belonged to them. It isn’t usually the 
typographical union that objects to the printing for the schools being 
done by the printing class of the school but usually the small employ- 


121 


ers of the printing trade who are deprived of a little printing. They 
are not willing to forego this for the sake of the good of the boys who 
are being trained for the business. 

I said, “I am prepared to demonstrate that the actual effect of es- 
tablishing a day industrial or trade school is to increase the demand 
for labor in every case and not to decrease it, and if I can not prove 
that proposition I am willing to resign my job.” Let me see if I can 
not prove it by figures. 

The business of an industrial or trade school is not to produce 
goods, but to produce workers and men. Its aim is not production, but 
education. The only purpose the shop serves in the school is to aid in 
securing that end and that end only. The minute the school steps over 
the line, so that it continues to work boys on any one given process 
after those boys have mastered it, for the sake of making more money 
or profit for the school, that school ceases to be an educational institu- 
tion and becomes a commercial shop and factory. (Applause.) 

Our trade union friends and employers do not realize what a poor 
manufacturing establishment an industrial and trade school is. The 
school is constantly taking on accessions of new boys, some of whom 
never stood in front of a lathe before in their lives. They are as 
green as gourds with regard to every machine or tool. Instead of keep- 
ing a boy on one machine and process the school is constantly changing 
him. Say we shift him four times through all the machines on the 
rough work and then on a little better work and a little better work 
and then a little better work. Just about the time the boy gets so he 
can do a piece of work so it will pass muster and you have brought 
him up to even a reasonable degree of trade shop speed, he is shifted 
to the next job and the next job. 

There isn’t today on the face of the globe a self-supporting indus- 
trial or trade school shop, and when the claim was made for the Gary 
School, as it has been made over and over again, that the shops were 
self-supporting institutions, the claim was based on a mere Juggling 
of the figures and nothing else. (Applause.) 

Now for the figures. The Worcester Trade School, at Worcester, 
Massachusetts runs one of the very best school shops in the country. 
Five years ago, there were 180 boys employed in the machine shop and 
wood shop of that school. The value of the labor product they con- 
tributed that year, was about five thousand dollars. 

Now divide with me. Five thousand dollars divided by 180 gives 
you a little less than thirty dollars for each boy during the year. That 
school ran, I think, forty-four weeks. In other words, the labor con- 
tribution of the boys in the school shops was about twenty-nine dollars 


122 


in forty-four weeks, or not much more than seventy-five cents a week. 

That shop was giving employment at that time to eight mechanics 
drawn from the trade, not to mention the teachers of related subjects. 
The average wage of those men was eighteen hundred dollars a year. 
In other words, the school paid $14,400 to mechanics or teachers. The 
effect of the establishment of the Worcester Trade School in the 
state of Massachusetts was to create a market for $14,400 worth of 
trade service. At the same time it took away from the trade $5,000 
worth of trade service, leaving the balance in favor of the trade over 
$9,000. This was equivalent to an additional demand in that com- 
munity for six workmen at fifteen hundred dollars a year and for 
eight workmen at twelve hundred dollars a year. 

The Boston Trade School, three years ago, turned out $12,000 
worth of stuff in the course of a year. $5,000 was for the material, 
leaving the labor contribution of 400 girls, $7,000. Divide $7,000 by 400 
and you have a little less than eighteen dollars as the contribution of 
each,. working on a forty-fiveweek year. She was producing about 
forty cents a week. That school gave employment to twenty-one wo- 
men, drawn from the trades. The effect of that $7,000, we will say, 
was to deprive ten women of employment at $700 a year, or seven 
women of employment at $1000 a year; but it gave employment to 
twenty-one women whose average salary in that school was well over 
$1000 a year. You will see that the effect of that school was to pro- 
duce a demand for labor in that community to the extent of $14,000 
at least. | 

There is another thing that my trade union friends didn’t alto- 
gether realize when we were talking the matter over in Minneapolis. 
Industrial schools draw boys away from the industry. They hold such 
boys out of industry for two years. They would have been far greater 
producers in industry than in the school. 

So the industrial school not only does not overcrowd the market 
with goods. It creates a market for labor both by giving employment 
to mechanics and teachers and by keeping the youths longer in school 
or out of industry. 

I have said that the total effect of any industrial or trade school 
worthy the name is to increase the market for skilled labor and never 
to decrease it, and I stand ready to prove that by figures taken from 
any school worthy to be called an industrial institution. 

In conference the unionist said, “‘Well, the other thing that bothers 
us is about overcrowding the trade.” That has been the spectre in 
the minds of all the trades. I think we are so far away from that 


123 


that I don’t think we need to worry ourselves much about it; but, I 
wanted to meet the issue squarely. 

You know, at bottom this whole question of attending any school 
is an economic proposition. The speaker who preceeded me called 
our attention to the fact that a great many children leave school be- 
cause they had to leave school, and I think that is true. Sometimes it 
isn’t because the family is down to the very point of subsistence, but 
because the family, and rightly, has reached a certain level or stand- 
ard or scale of living which is dear to its heart. When the children be- 
come numerous and expenses greater the only way the family has to 
hold on to that standard of living is to send Johnny out to work. 

When you set up an industrial or trade school, you have exactly 
the same economic problems at work in the background as you have 
with the regular schools. 


I am running a little school up at Minneapolis. We have a regis- . 


stration that is well on its way toward 2500 students. Only about 280 
of these students are in the day school. I firmly believe that in a city 
of 400,000 people, when we get to the point where we offer training in 
a total of twelve trades, we will have a total registration in those 
twelve trades of more than 500 boys, sending out an average of from 
20 to 25 boys each year. So you can see how many people are going 
out into those trades from year to year. 

As a matter of fact, trades are always avareroeenl just as all 
businesses are potentially overcrowded. Knocking at the door of every 
trade, every calling, every profession in the world, whether it be law 
or medicine or theology or teaching or engineering or trade work or 
bookkeeping or stenography, is a tremendous army of the incompe- 
tent and the unfit. It is no answer to this problem to say that the in- 
dustrial school will crowd the field. It willnot. It takes boys, almost 
all of whom have made up their minds that they want to follow a 
trade, and puts them into the trade properly equipped rather than 
leaves them to grovel in the great army of the unfit and incompetent 
all the rest of their livees. 

One unionist said, “We are afraid of this question of the control 
of this work. We don’t want it used against us.” They said, and 
they said rightly, “It has been used against us sometimes.” One of 
the biggest mistakes that any man every made who ran an industrial 
or trade school in all the past was made on the day when he allowed 
his boys to go out and take part in a strike in the trade as strike- 
breakers, (Applause) and we people who are engaged in this move- 
ment today have constantly the spectre of that thing coming up in the 
minds of trade unionists with whom we deal. The business of the 


124 


school is to stay out of strikes. The business of the school is to play 
neither the trade union’s game nor the employer’s, but the game of 
the children. 

There are three things the union can do with industrial education. 
It is coming, coming to stay. You can fight it; you can stand off and 
have nothing to do with it. If you do either one of those two things, 
you will have nobody to blame but yourself if it goes wrong. The 
third alternative is to get into the movement, to work with vocational 
education and help it and guide it, and by all means, let it help and 
guide you, for you need it as certainly as it needs you. I firmly believe 
that there is to be no salvation for the trade unionism of the future 
short of determined action to improve the efficiency of its own men. 
(Applause.) 

As a result of our trade conferences in Minneapolis we have agree- 
ments for eighteen or nineteen trades. You can read of them in the 
pamphlet you hold. In the first place, we are going through two 
stages. We got employers and unions to agree to what you might call 
a modus vivendi, describing in a general way what we proposed to do. 

We are running a two-year school. In it we try the boy out for 
three months in some trade. If he is suited for it we give him two 
years of training. We have an advisory committee from each trade 
taught and connected with the school. When the boy finishes his two- 
_year course we put him in the trade at the third year apprentice wage. 
We control his employment and education during the year he is out in 
the trade as best we can, and confer the diploma upon him at the end 
of the third year. : 

We found it was one thing to get up a modus vivendi under which, 
in general, employers agreed to come to the school as the first source 
of supply and under which the unions agreed, so far as the closed 
shops with which they dealt, to subscribe to the same plan. It was 
another thing to secure for this boy a definite career as an apprentice 
in the shop after he left the school. 

So we have now moved for the revival of the individual contract 
of apprenticeship for the boy in the trade. We have secured these 
with three lines; the automobile shop, which is entirely organized; the 
print shop, which is strongly organized—about ninety per cent of the 
printers belong to it—where the typothetae and the typographical 
union both agreed; and the bricklayers, where the master builders as- 
sociation on the one side and bricklayers union on the other side, 
agreed. 

I believe, friends, that the two steps, a general trade understand- 
ing and apprenticeship, are absolutely necessary to insure the proper 


125 


selection, training, placement, further education and graduation of our 
young people who are to come into our schools, and I do not believe we 
can rest content with the mere job of opening the doors of our schools 
as we have our regular schools, taking in those who come, giving them 
_ training and then turn them back to the tender mercies of industry 
' without any further control over them for the future. (Applause.) 


A DISCUSSION 
P, R. BELL, 


Delegate of the Fort Wayne Federation of Labor 
Fort Wayne, Ind. 

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

I think we have a very small calibre gun up here alongside of the 
big guns who have been talking this afternoon. I don’t know what to 
think—there are so many different angles from which to view voca- 
- tional education. We in Fort Wayne, are working out Dr. Prosser’s 
idea. We believe that that is true vocational education. We are for- 
mulating trade agreements; the work of the vocational school is being 
formulated and looked after by the Federation of Labor and the var- 
ious trade unions connected with the work brought forth in the school. 
They are absolutely in perfect accord. 

As luck would have it, Fort Wayne is fairly well organized. In 
fact, in several of the trades represented in the school, they are one 
hundred and fifty per cent organized. We don’t have the troubles 
that Dr. Prosser finds in Minneapolis. We have organizations of the 
union men and organizations of the masters who get together each 
year in trade agreements—collective bargaining—so when things of 
this nature come up, we don’t have the difficulty that we would have 
were we never in accord and never get together at any other times. 

So we found out, when the law went into effect we didn’t know 
what to think of it. Organized labor looked at it with suspicion at 
first. We thought of manual training and it didn’t look very good to 
us, but we began to investigate and discovered in the Indiana law that 
we could control the situation there and not the other side; and we 
control it, at least in Fort Wayne. We believe, if we look at it from the 
broader point of view, such as we take there, that what is best for us 
is best for all of the people in general. We belive that if we educate a 
boy along the right lines he will of necessity, be a union man. If he 
receives an education and begins to think, he becomes a union man. 
School teachers, notwithstanding the fact that they are not organized 
as they should he, are perhaps a proof of the rule. The apprentice can- 
not learn the trade in the shop, so we figured that the easiest and best 
vlan was to place it in the public schools instead of in private trade 
schools, where the boys are more or less exploited. 

livery teacher in our school is a practical man, teaching the prac- 


127 


tical end of the trade. We have an academic man, who takes care of 
the academic end of the trade and correlates it with the work in the 
shop. 

Now, whether our plan is the right plan or not we don’t know. 
We have had three years of it. We are working out the plans as Dr. 
Prosser has worked them out and is still continuing the work in Minne- 
appolis. Our director, Mr. Gordon, believes exactly as Dr. Prosser 
does; in fact, in their work with vocational education they are in 
accord. 


tea bi: 


THE BANQUET 


PRESIDENT MILLER: Taking up our subject this evening I 
think our Toastmaster needs no words of praise from me—Myr. William 
J. Bogan, Principal of the Lane Technical School. 


MR. BOGAN: Ladies and Gentlemen: 


According to the philosophers of materialism, man is a weak, 
miserable creature, as helpless amidst the forces of nature as the wil- 
low twig in a great whirlpool. His efforts to perform are practically 
negligible. In fact, according to some of these philosophers, notably 
the great Alfred Wallace, man is as close to a state of savagery today 
as he was in the days when he hung head downward from the treetops 
and ate his dinner of peanuts a la carte. 

The only permanent change in social or industrial conditions 
comes from economic causes. If a peasant assassinates a prince and 
Russia mobolizes, and Germany declares war, and France and England 
and Italy follow suit, we should not blame any one in particular. We 
should look for the economic causes—a most comfortable theory, 
you will admit, a theory that at once removes from our souls the en- 
tire burden of sin. 7 

~ We may apply this same theory to this banquet tonight. What is 
the fundamental reason for your appearing here? Some of you be- 
lieve that you came here to get a good meal—a most foolish hope. 
(Laughter) You took fish, I see. There is no relation whatever 
between a banquet and a good meal. (Laughter.) 
| However, you think that you came here to listen to the eloquence 
of Mr. Shoop. Some of you think you came here to pick up nuggets 
of wisdom from Mr. Prosser. I tell you, two dollars a plate is a high 
price to pay for speeches in these days when eggs are classed with the 
precious stones. Some of you I know, some of you ladies, have come — 
here in the belief that you will see Miss Marlatt hang the pelt of mere 
man on the barndoor; and some of you have expected to hear Mr. 
Shanahan tell how legislation might be secured in Springfield. We are 


going to fool you there, because I don’t believe Mr. Shanahan is here, 
and he wrote that in all probability he would not be able to get here 
tonight. He will surely be here in the morning. 

Now all of these things are mere delusions—delusions. The same 
cause that initiated the great European War brought you here tonight. 


129 


To elaborate: The Germans say that their wonderful industrial suc- 
cess of the past thirty or forty years excited the jealousy and cupidity 
of the Allies. The Allies say that the wonderful success of the Germ- 
ans during the past thirty or forty years made the Germans arrogant 
and lustful for conquest. The cause is the same, whichever side you 
espouse, whether you are pro-Ally or pro-German. The entire difficul- 
ty came from that little white label, “Made in Germany.” 

The same thing happened in this country. Our captains of indus- 
trry were driven to take up industrial education through the influence 
of that little label, ““Made in Germany.” They felt that the industrial 
Supremacy of this country was in danger and they looked about for 
remedies. They studied the German situation and decided that we 
needed a system of industrial education in this country. 

Now I don’t wish you to believe that that cause, sordid, if you will, 


is the only one that has aided in bringing about this wonderful devel- _ 


opment of industrial education during the past decade, but that was 
the initial cause and one of the dominant causes for several years. 
Thank God, it is not the dominant cause now. There are other motives 
and these motives, I think, are indicated by the change in the title that 
we give to the subject. Nowadays we say always industrial education, 
and I am sure that there are some here tonight who attended that first © 
banquet of the National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Edu- 
cation, who heard Dr. Eliot say that all there was to industrial educa- 
tion was mere trade school education, that the problem was very sim- 
ple. We were trying to make something difficult out of it, and if we 
merely established trade schools, the whole problem would be solved 
to our satisfaction. 

You see we have gone away beyond that and the problem is far 
from being solved; but Chicago, as one of the great cities of the 
world, ought to lead in solving this problem of vocational education ; 
Chicago, I say, because I think the great majority in Chicago believe 
that the leader of this great movement should be the superintendnt of 
the regular public schools. (Applause.) We hope that the courage, 
the strength and the wisdom necessary to bring this great movement 
to a successful issue will be given to the superintendent. It gives me 
very great pleasure now to introduce Mr. John D. Shoop, Superinten- 
dent of the Chicago Schools. (Applause.) 


\ 


130 


ADDRESS OF WELCOME 
JOHN D. SHOOP 
Superintendent of Schools, Chicago 


Mr. Toastmaster, Members of the Association: I deem myself 
peculiarly fortunate tonight in being permitted to appear on the initial 
part of the program of the evening. I am fortunate in another sense, 
because in all probability the most desirable part of this program has 
been assigned to me, that of extending to you the most cordial wel- 
come that is within the province of the Middle West to extend. 

I have listened with a great deal of attention to that part of the 
program which has preceded. I was very much interested in the 
range given by one of the speakers of vocational education, that it 
begins with the cradle and ends with the grave. I think if I interpret 
correctly an epitaph that was described to me, I may challenge the ver- 
acity of the statement. It seems that a dentist had died and his wife 
had gone to one who was an expert to see if he would provide a suitable 
inscription to be placed upon his monument, and he agreed to do so 
for a stipulated price, and when the dear wife came to read the epi- 
taph she found inscribed this sentence: “He is now filling his last 
cavity.” 

I wish that I could tell you tonight how happy we are in having 
you in our beloved Chicago. It is not necessary for me to extol the 
virtues of this magnificent city. They are too numerous to be com- 
prehended within the time that will be allotted to me. I might also be 
subjected to the criticism that came to the man from Atlanta who 
when he was riding on one of the trains of the Southern Railway with 
a number of other traveling men tried to convince them that Atlanta 
was the greatest city in the world. He said Atlanta was the most 
modern city in existence. It had the most beautiful streets and the 
most magnificent residences and the finest looking ladies and the 
finest climate that were to be found in the length and breadth of the 
land. He said that Atlanta had only one fault and that was that it did 
not have sufficient water; and finally a man from Chattanooga, who 
was sharing the compartment with him, said to him, “Look here, my 
friend, if that is the only trouble with your city, I would suggest that 
you construct a pipe line a few miles inland and tap the waters of one 
of our great rivers, and then if you can suck as hard as you can blow, 
there will be no doubt about Atlanta having enough water.” (Laughter. 


131 


We are not confronted with the difficulty of apologizing for our 
water supply. I read the other day of a couple of men standing in 
front of the great cataract at Niagara. One of them said to the other, 
“What a wonderful waste!” and the other fellow said, ““What is your 
business?” He says, “I ama milk-man.” (Laughter) I think that the 
lake provides sufficient water for all contingencies. 

I am glad to be here tonight because I find myself surrounded by 
those who have been the pioneers in paving the way for the great 
plans of vocational education. There are seated in this audience 
chamber those who have blazed the trail and have pointed the way for 
the readjustment of our systems of education along modern lines, and 
it is a pleasure tonight as I see them, to speak a moment as to the 
triumph of the cause which they espouse. For let me say to you, 
ladies and gentlemen, that one of the most difficult things that the 
educator encounters is the attempt at the readjustment of conditions... 
in order to meet immediate needs. More than one person who has 
espoused the cause of the profession has immolated himself and placed 
his own prestige and position upon the altar of his own conscience 
because, perchance, he may have lived a few decades in advance of the — 
great proocession. And so tonight it is a pleasure to testify to the 
achievements that have been made by men like Mr. Harvey and those 
of his kind who have stood in the front ranks, (applause) who were 
found in the vanguard at the time when vocational training was not 
yet recognized as a legitimate part of our public school instruction. 
Did you ever stop to consider what a glorious thing it is to live in the 
initial decades of a new century—a century which just a few days ago 
passed its milestone and now might be characterized as “Sweet Six- 
teen?” It is a magnificent privilege to live in such an age as this; and 
in an age in-which the navigation of the air, which was always con- 
sidered fanciful and beyond the bounds of human possibility, has been 
successfully performed; in an age in which the art of war has been 
changed from the horizontal to the perpendicular, as you will appre- 
hend when you read the accounts of its terrible carnage in foreign 
countries; but above all, in an age in which we are beginning to recog- 
nize and appreciate those things which are fundamental and essential 
in the thing which we call education. 

Just a few years back, when the lad followed his father off to 
work in the morning, and went with him into the little blacksmith 
shop by the side of the street watching the sparks fly while helping 
father in his crude way and as the best he could, no one seemed to 
realize that the boy was being educated by such a process. Indeed, it 
would have been degrading to the term education to have said that 


132 


one was going to school at the anvil of his father, and yet today, recog- 
nizing the necessity of maintaining the poise and equilibrium in that 
which we call education and training, we are bringing that same anvil 
into the schoolroom and making it a legitimate part of our system of 
public instruction. 

It is not so long ago that no one realized that when a boy went to 
work on the farm and learned how to plant and to fertilize and to 
grow grain that he was being educated. Oh, no, it thought his edu- 
cation must come from the little schoolhouse down by the roadside; 
but today we are recognizing that the boy was by these processes 
weaving into the warp and woof of his nature the essential figures of 
a general thorough-going education. And so today we are beginning 
to appreciate that in order to get back to that symmetry which must 
characterize the mind and brain of the human being, we must bring 
within the confines of our places of learning some of the things that 
‘were formerly considered rude and coarse, and we must apply them if 
we may hope to maintain that poise and balance essential to efficiency. 

More and more we are coming to realize that education means 
work. It means toil. It means application. It means teaching the 
human hand to respond to the suggestions of the developed human 
brain. It means bringing about a parity between manual and mental 
dexterity. It means that kind of equipoise that will ever give outward 
expression in some tangible form to the wealth of impressions that 
_come to us from our own environment. - 

There is no such thing as a dual education. We are not here to 
promulgate that theory or dogma, for when we come to analyze it, 
we find nothing more than the same old education that has always 
been in vogue, although not posing under that particular title. 

What we need today is an education of virility, and education 
with power in reserve behind it, an education that is measured in dy- 
namic terms and units,‘an education whose value is determined by its 
powers of accomplishment and the ability to help to do the work of the 
world. Brawn and brain were the potent factors that leveled the 
primeval forest and brawn and brain are just as essential in the count- 
ing-house today as they were in the forests a half century since, for 
no brain can reach its highest order of efficiency, or yield the major 
products of human possibilities without brawn behind it to reinforce 
it; and for this reason we are looking well into our schemes of educa- 
tion today for that which will build up the physical and make of it the 
basis of that larger and growing mentality for which the needs of the 
times are calling. 

Therefore tonight I desire to greet you in the name of that form 


133 


of educationo which fits the individual for the part he is to play in the 
economy of life. And education must be creative as well as acquisi- 
tive. If there is one kind of educetion, so called, against which I would 
like to warn you tonight, it is that type which is sometimes designated 
as automatic efficiency. It is easy sometimes, indeed, for us to be imi- 
tators, but our greatest task in life it to educate ourselves so that we 
shall become creators, i. e., individuals who can take in impressions 
from the raw materials of our surroundings and so elaborate and cor- 
relate in our own personalities these elements that they will be given 
out in the composite form of the highest standards and types of ser- 
vice. For after all, when we have summated the final purposes of edu- 
cation, I believe that they will be expressed more truly and more ex- 
plicitly in the single term of service. Why is this true? Because edu- 
cation is the transformation of the cruder possibilities of humanity 
over into the finer essences that find their ways out into the darker. 
regions of human need. Niagara poured its volume of water over that 
precipice for years, and men came and looked and wondered at the 
marvelous phenomenon of nature. They went away and again returned 
and watched that mighty torrent as it poured its stream over the 
precipice, but finally there came on a day one who stood before that 
torrent and detected in its roar the voice of a mighty potentiality that 
asked if it might be harnessed, and feats of engineering that have 
been the marvel of the modern world, that great potentiality, that 
great stream, has been turned into transmissible dynamic force, and 
by means of the dynamo, has been converted into what one might call] 
the quintessence of energy, and sent off over lines of communication to 
drive the wheels of industry and of transportation and tu furnish teat 
and light for thousands. | 

What is the secret? Control, transformation. »nd when we 
have applied that secret to the great brawn of humanity, moving on to 
its unknown destiny, we shall find that the same rule obtains, namely 
the transformation of the things that are gross in human nature over 
into the finer essences of human service. 

I do not know the secret of life. I do not know the mysterious 
process by which we distill from our experience the elixir which is the 
draft of the gods, but when once it reveals its secret to the candid man. 
it expresses itself in terms of human service and individual sacrifice. 
To this end, my friends, let our labors be co-operative, that out of the 
ereat scheme of education there may come ultimately such lofty con- | 
ceptions of its meaning that in the preparation of boys and girls for 
the duties of life their efforts will be measured by the contributions 
which they make to the great world of humanity at large. 


134 


If we may keep this thought in view, if we hold steadily to this, 
if we maintain a proper poise in education, vocational, intellectual and 
moral, then we may see in the product of our schools that mentality, 
morality and physical virility that will measure up to the problems of 
tomorrow. (Applause.) 3 


135 


PRINCIPLES ‘THAT’ SHOULD GOVERNGIN | GEiis 
FRAMING OF VOCATIONAL LAWS 


CCAP PROSSER 


Director Dunwoody Institute, Minneapolis 


When your superintendent was saying the things he said about 
this beloved city of Chicago, I was mindful of the fact that one never 
comes to Chicago without realizing that while Chicago doesn’t hesi- 
tate to criticise itself, it doesn’t want anybody else to do it. But I 
have no wish to,do it. 

There is a vein of optimism running through me tonight. I have 
been thrilled by the proceedings of this day, as well as lifted into the 
seventh heaven by the tremendous progress which the movement for 
vocational education is making in this country at the present time. I 
hardly know how to express how I feel about this good old world and 
what is happening to it. After all, this is the best day of the best. 
week of the best year of the best century the world has ever known; 
and while this is indeed a critical year for all those who are not en-— 
gaged in vocational education, for those who are in any way connected 
with the movement, it is a time of larger and larger opportunity and 
the beginning of a new era in American education. Why do I say 
that? Why am I so optimistic tonight? Well, largely because of the 
fact that this vocational education movement has made progress faster 
than any other movement, twice as fast as any other movement that 
has ever come upon the American people. The movement has made 
all our people more anxious to conserve our human as well as our nat- 
ural resources. It has taken hold of the imagination of the American 
people as no other movement in education has ever done. 

There is the danger. The truth about the matter is that this 
movement has come upon us faster than we are prepared to meet it, 
faster than we have teachers adequately prepared to give instruction, 
faster than we have a knowledge of vocations to which we expect to 
adapt our training, faster than we have courses of instruction, faster 
than we have methods, faster than we have buildings and equipment; 
and lastly and perhaps what is more serious still, faster than we have 
any adequate system of organization in most of the states of the union, 
for dealing with the problem. 

If I had had my way about it, which I could not have, I should 
have been very glad to have seen this whole proposal to secure federal 


136 


aid for vocational education postponed for at least five years, because 
I realize that we are not yet ready to spend wisely the federal grants 
conferred upon the states under the terms of the Smith-Hughes Act. 
We shall blunder, we shall make serious mistakes, and yet, after all, I 
do not'suppose that there was any other way out of the situation. It 
seemed quite certain five years ago that we should have legislation of 
this kind, that the national government would give the aid to the 
states to stimulate and encourage them in carrying on this work, and 
therefore, it became the part of constructive service on the part of all 
the friends of vocational education to take part in the movement to 
secure federal aid and to 'throw just as many safeguards as was pos- 
sible around the terms on which that aid was given into the hands of 
the various states. 

You know, after all, that is the way we do business in America. 
William Allen White says that a very large majority of our people are 
made up of what he calls ‘“For-God-sakers,” the people who get very 
much aroused on every question and who say, “‘For God’s sake, let’s 
do something.” As constrasted with the Germans, we do not often at- 
tempt the solution of the problem from the standpoint of scientific 
study and due preparation before embarking upon a movement. We 
get a great hullabaloo started, we arouse ourselves, we get into an 
emotional state. We join the ‘‘For-God-sakers,” and then we have 
some legislation. We put something upon the statute books which we 
must follow after some fashion; then we begin to worry. We make 
mistakes here and there, and learn by them. 

In other words, we work not by careful study, not by deliberate 
plan and preparation, but always by the method of trial and error. lt 
think we have a lot of that in our public schools and in vocational edu- 
cation; and alas, I am quite certain that we shall probably have a lot 
more in vocational education. Wth all of that, however, I am an optim- 
ist, because there is with us no other way out. Left to their own 
devices, it would have required a hundred years for all the states of 
the Union to have attacked this problem in any serious-going way. 
With all the expense and trouble, with all the failures and setbacks, in 
the last analysis we shall make progress in America in this movement, 
simply by dealing with the job, and the job is here. 

The Smith-Hughes Bill passed the Senate last summer. It passed 
unanimously. It passed the House almost without a dissenting vote 
in December. After ten years of struggle, the national congress, back- 
ed by the platform of every great national party, has gone on record 
practically unanimously, not only in favor of the idea of vocational 
‘education, but in favor of granting large sums of money from the 


137 


national treasury in order to stimulate the states to carry on the work. 

I want you to stop and think what that means. This is the first 
time that a specific grant has ever been given by the national govern- 
ment to be spent through the channels of the secondary schools of this 
country. There have been grants of money to the states. The na- 
tional government opened up quite a number of pork barrels between 
1830 to 1850, and a large sum of money was appropriated to the 
states, a good deal of which went into corduroy roads. There have 
been grants to the land grant colleges for special types of higher 
education. But this is the first time in the history of our government — 
that any grant has been made and standards set up for education, of 
less than college grade. 

It takes about ten years to get a piece of legislation of this kind 
through Congress. The public sentiment of the country has to be 


aroused. Congress has to be educated up to the new point of view .. 


and to the necessity of the new step. And along the way many men 
deserve credit for the things which have been done. About ten years 
ago, Congressman Davis from the State of Minnesota introduced the 
first bill, which provided grants for secondary schools in agriculture. 
Later Senator Dolliver took up the measure. He spent two years 
pushing it. When he went the way of all flesh, Senator Page, of Ver-— 
mont, who as his colleague on the Senate Education Committee, took 
charge of it. He joined with him, William B. Wilson, formerly secre- 
tary of the United Mine Workers of America and at that time con- 
gressman from Pennsylvania. When Mr. Wilson became a member of 
the cabinet, Senator Hoke Smith took charge of the bill and associated 
with him, Congressman Hughes of Georgia. The movement was gain- 
ing strength. It was agreed that something should be done to push the 
issue vigorously. Senator Smith asked for the appointment of a com- 
mission. The Commission on National Aid to Vocational Education 
was created in January, 1914, and given exactly sixty days in which to 
make a report, with notice that there would not be any extension of 
time. The commission did something which no other commission has 
ever done: it reported on time down to the minute. At ten o’clock on 
the morning of the last day, Senator Smith arose in the Senate and 
Congressman Hughes arose in the House. Each presented the report 
of the commission. Further, that commission not only lived within its 
income of $15,000, but it turned back more than $5,000 of unexpended 
money into the treasury. This was a source of very great astonish- 
ment on the part of Congress and a factor in winning a degree of con- 
fidence which played no small part in the passage of the measure by 
the present Congress. Among the men and women who are present in 


138 


this audience, and here and there all over this country, are people, 
unknown and unread as they may be in the years to come, who are en- 
titled to a large measure of credit, for the support which they gave to 
the measure. 

A great.many people are entitled to credit for the present status 
of the bill. Today is rests in joint conference committee between the 
House and Senate because of the difference of opinion in those bodies 
as to the way in which the national board of control should be made 
up. That point will be settled in a few days. The bill will be broughi 
out, and passed. It will be signed by the President of the United 
States, I verily believe, before the first day of February. Grants will 
be given to the states the first of next July, the beginning of grants 
which by 1925 and 1926 will amount to at least seven million dollars. 

And now I would like to talk about the principles which underlie 
this national legislation, pointing the way to the principles which will 
underlie the state legislation which must be passed by the states of the 
Union. : 

The national bill requires four things on the part of every state 
in the Union. First, the legislature of each one of these states must 
formally accept the provisions of the Smith-Hughes Act. There are 
forty-eight states in the Union. In thirty-six of the states the legisla- 
ture is in session this year. In the other twelve states, the governor 
may accept the provisions of the Act until the next session of the 
legislature. The states which are in session this year have, on the 
average a sixty-day session, and within sixty days, in many of the 
states, the first step will be taken toward a system of vocational edu- 
cation. 

The second thing which the legislature or the governor must do is 
to designate the fund or funds which it proposes to use. There are 
three: one, finally amounting to three million dollars annually, for 
agriculture; similarly one of three million dollars for industries, and 
one of a million dollars for the training of teachers of vocational sub- 
jects. A state may accept the fund for agricultural education without 
accepting the fund for industrial education, or the reverse; but after 
1920 no state may accept either without accepting the corresponding 
fund for the training of teachers. The provisions are the same for the 
fund for Home Economics education. 

The third thing which the legislature must do it to designate or 
create a State Board for administering the Federal Act within the con- 
fines of the state. When the commission met at Washington a few 
years ago, the spectre of the controversy, which had been so especially 
violent in the state of Illinois, with regard to dual control, was always 


139 


in the background of the meeting room, and there was only one thing 
for the commission to do, that was to take the position from the start 
that the national government had no right to interfere; that the states 
would never tolerate the national government’s interference with the 
autonomy of the states in the organization of their administrative 
machinery. This I believe is sound.. So in the language of the federal 
bill the state legislature must either ‘‘designate or create a State 
Board to co-operate with the Federal Board.” If there is already a 
State Board of Education or other similar board, the legislatures may 
designate it. If there is no state board of education in the state then 
a State Board, made up of at least three persons must be created to 
administer the Act. In other words, Massachusetts will administer 
this work under a State Board of Education, the same one which is al- 
ready directing vocational education in that commonwealth. Wiscon- 
sin may, if it chooses, administer the Act through the State Industrial 
Commission, already created. What Illinois will do is a question that 
doublless will be settled by the present legislature. 

The fourth thing that the legislature must do it to designate the 
state treasurer as custodian of this fund, allotted to the state quarter- 
ly. He will do business on the one side with the national treasurer and 
on the other side with this state board of control, paying out money to — 
the various schools of the state on requisitions made by the state 
board of control. These things the legislature or the governor of a 
state must do to secure the benefits of the Act for a state. 

What are the principles lying back of this piece of national legis- 
lation? I want to take them up under three heads; first, the principles 
that justify the grant from the national government to the states; 
second, the purposes that should underlie those grants; third, the 
machinery necessary to carry out the provisions of the Act. 

Concerning the justification for the grant of this national money 
to the states, if we assume at the outset that we are relatively an in- 
efficient people, if. we believe that we need to become more efficient, if 
we believe that training has anything to do with efficiency, then, if 
we want efficiency we must train for it. Again, if it be right and wise 
for the national government to do all sorts of things at large expense 
in the attempt to conserve our natural resources, then the national 
government is justified in going to the same trouble and expense in 
the attempt to conserve the human resources of the country, the great 
undeveloped, uncovered, untrained skill and appetite and talent and 
possibilities, of the seventeen million children who throng the public 
school houses of this great natioon. Again, if it be true, and it is true, 
that there is a sense in which the United States as a whole, as an eco- 


140 


nomic unit, is competing against well trained Germany or England or 
France or Japan, then the only way this United States can, as a whole, 
become a successful economic unit in that competition is by raising all 
of its people to higher and still higher levels of economic efficiency. 


Further, the problem of vocational education in this country is a 
problem which transcends all state-lines and rises to the importance 
of a federal and national problem. Hence, every state in this Union 
must meet the problem of educating its people for vocational efficiency 
for state and national progress. With us state lines are not bound- 
aries. Our people move readily from one state to another. They carry 
into their new locations whatever of training they have received ; what- 
ever of added intelligence, of larger skill, of better citizenship, as a 
rich asset for the new place of residence. If this be true, the problem 
transcends the state line. 


One single construction house in the city of New York will, in the 
course of a single season, draw its workers from a dozen of the states 
of the Union and send them into other states of the Union to work. 
Cotton is raised in Georgia, sent to Massachusetts and made into tex- 
tiles, which are soid in Chicago. Hides come from Colorado, are 
shipped into Massachusetts and there made into shoes which are worn 
in every state in the Union. So that measured from the standpoint of 
either products or work, state lines are blotted out and we become, in 
a sense in which we have not always regarded ourselves, a nation, a 
people belonging to a larger economic and political union which we call 
the United States of America; and the national government is fully 
justified in spending money for the purpose of improving the efficiency 
of every worker within its boundaries. 

Second, what are the purposes which underlie this legislation? If 
you are deeply interested in this question I suggest thatyou read a little 
book published by Sidney Webb, called “Grants in Aid.” It sets out 
the principles upon which this law is founded. Sidney Webb is one of 
the British economists who has grown tired of the “‘For-God-saker”’ 
attitude of his people, and who, much distressed because the English 
people have worked so largely by the method of trial and error, as we 
also have done, has been studying some of the great problems in Eng- 
lish life for the purpose of trying to gather from them lessons for 
guidance in the future. 

In his studies he has covered two hundred years of the history of 
what the English call “grants in aid’’—the thing which we call state 
aid. The British government has been in the habit of giving 
sums of money into the hands of local governments, just as we have 


141 


given to the states sums of money out of the treasury of the national 
government; and just as we are today giving sums of money out of 
the treasury of the state governments to the various local communi- 
ties of the states. He has brought together out of the experience of 
two centuries a set of rules which are given in the report of the com- 
mission and upon which, as I have said, this bill was founded. 

The fundamental proposition is this: that grants in aid from cen- 
tral government to local government, from nation to state, or from 
state to local unit, should be given, first, for the purpose of stimulating 
the local community to undertake some new and needed form of ser- 
vice which the national government believes should be undertaken for 
the sake of the public welfare. The undertaking might be any one of a 
hundred things in education. It might be medical inspection. It might 
be play grounds. It might be athletic training. It might be military 
training. It might be a specific grant to help the struggling rural 
schools. It might be vocational education. It might be some form of 
rating. It might be some form of wide-spread medical service. It 
might be some form of workmen’s compensation. But is must, be 
something which the central government, the national government, 
the state, with a larger and wider outlook on the whole than any com- 
munity may have, wants done so much that it is willing to say to the 
local community, ‘““We are going to give this money to you because we 
want this service performed for the sake of the larger community.” 

I do not believe, friends, that we shall have many more grants 
from the state treasury to local communities—blanket grants for the 
general thing we call education. Personally, I think the time has 
come for the state through the state department of education, to dis- 
eriminate carefully, and to select here and there those things which it 
believes should be done for tthe sake of a larger and better Illinois in 
the days to come, to focus the attention of the state upon those prob- 
lems and to use state aid for the solution of those problems. If a man 
is honest in his belief that vocational education isn’t needed in Illinois, 
if he doesn’t believe it should be included in the list of specific things 
that are needed, he ought to oppose any attempt to pass legislation on 
the subject, Mr. President, because the proposition rests squarely upon 
the idea that vocational education is needed, that the national govern- 
ment should give certain specific grants to the states for its promotion. 

A second purpose of these grants, central government to local gov- 
ernment, nation to state, state to local community, it to equalize the in- 
equalities of the burden. I wonder if you realize how great these in- 
equalities are in taxing the resources of capital for purposes of educa- 
tion. In the little state of Nevada today, the returns are eighteen 


142 


# 


times as much as they are in the state of South Carolina; that is to 
say, with the same rate imposed in the two states, taking them as a 
whole, by and large, Nevada would realize eighteen times as much 
money for purposes of education as the state of South Carolina. Or, 
again, South Carolina would have to tax itself eighteen times as much 
as the state of Nevada to secure the same standards in education. 
Hence, the national government, recognizing these things, makes nat- 
ional grants to the states to equalize the inequalities of the burden, 
and to equalize the opportunity for vocational education. 


Third, grants in aid should be given, central government to local 
government, nation to state, state to local community, for the purpose 
of purchasing a reasonable degree of participation in the conduct of 
this new and needed form of service. I know this is where some of us 
disagree on the question of national aid. There are states in this Union 
which still look upon this whole government as being made up of forty- 
eight integral communities, which join together as a matter of con- 
venience for the purpose of passing legislation. They believe that this 
money in the national treasury belongs to the forty-eight states and 
should be apportioned out among them. 


There is, however, the other view, and it is behind this legislation. 
This federal grant sounds the note of nationalism. The money is nat- 
ional money, raised by national taxation. It doesn’t belong to South 
Carolina or to Illinois. When it is expended, it is expended by the 
national government to aid the states in doing something which the 
national government wants done, and for no other purpose. It is there- 
fore, the part of the national government to clearly define the purpose 
for which this money is to be used, and, without interfering in any 
way, shape or form with the economy of the states in carrying on their 
own educational affairs, to say to them, “If you decide to use this 
money, we want a reasonable degree of participation in this new form 
of service.” 


Fourth, the purpose of this national grant, central government to 
local government, nation to state, state to local community, is to estab- 
lish what the English call an “irreducible minimum of efficiency.” | I 
mean to set the minimum standard, below which the community will 
not be allowed to fall with its work. When the state of Illinois gives 
a grant to the treasurer of a school so that the district may hold a 
seven-month school, and says ‘‘You will have to do it,” that is estab- 
lishing an irreducible minimum. Now, when the national government 
gives money to the state, or the state to the local community, it can 
define in the terms of the grant, the lowest minimum, below which 


143 


work to be done will not be allowed to fall and yet receive the aid. 
These are the principles upon which this law is founded. 

There is a further matter which needs to be emphasized in this 
connection and I come to my third point—the machinery for putting 
this law into operation. I want you to appreciate the difficulty of it. 
This law proposes to give money to the public schools. The public 
schools are dear to the hearts of the people of these different states, 
who have established and maintained them along certain lines and 
with certain standards. Here was the proposition requiring new plans 
and new methods, and the national government wanting tosee it carried 
out. How was it to be done? The national government might set up a 
plan and employ directors to carry it out. But the states wouldn’t 
tolerate a flood of federal agents going about from school to school, in- 
specting and saying, “Here, you do this or you do that. If you don’t, 
you don’t get any money. Iam going to report you.” The states would _ 
not tolerate that, and rightly. Hence a plan of co-operation had to be 
developed, in which state governments and the national government 
could work together. And what was done was this. It was as though 
the national government said to the state, ‘“Now don’t misunderstand 
us. You don’t need to take this money unless you want to, but don’t 
forget that it is our money. If you do spend it, it must be on certain - 
terms. Some of these terms are clearly defined in the law, others must 
be arrived at by agreement. We will have a Federal board. What we 
want you to do is to establish a State Board of Control. Your state 
board of control can deal with our Federal board of control. When 
they have taken into consideration the conditions set up in the law, 
and special features of the situation in Illinois, then we shall have a 
meeting of minds on the policies and principles to be followed in the 
expenditure of this money in Illinois. The money will continue to flow » 
year by year, as long as you live up to your agreement.” That leaves 
Illinois in absolute possesion of its sovereignty. Illinois, through its 
legislature, may enter into the contract or not, but if it does, it binds 
‘itself to the agreement made between the State board of control and 
the Federal board of control for dealing with the problem of vocational 
education in Illinois. 

In accepting the benefits and the provisions of the Act the state 
expresses its decision to promote vocational education in the state and 
therefore agrees to match each dollar of federal money with a dollar 
from state funds, local funds, or both. Standards and procedures for 
administering the Act within the state are to be set up by the State 
board, with the approval of the Federal board. In turn, the state bears 
to its local communities much the same relation as the federal govern- 


144 


ment to the state government. And by the same principles, it should 
pay for it, and likewise upon the basis of a co-operative agreement. I 
do not believe that the state of Illinois, or any other state, has any 
_ right to take part in the educational affairs of local communities with- 
out buying that right, on some reasonable basis. And the amount of 
aid granted by state and nation should be large enough to make it 
worth while for the community to 'tax itself in order to maintain the 
“irreducible minimum” set up in the terms of the agreemnt. 

To my mind, a fair basis for such a contract is one-third from fed- 
eral funds, one-third from state funds, and one-third from local funds. 
Such a division of financial responsibility provides for participation of 
state and nation, adjusts the inequality of the burden, and permits 
of a just pride in the enterprise on the part of the local community 
which comes from self-sacrifice for the local school. 

At the risk of wearying you, I want to touch upon one more point—- 
the control and organization of the schools for carrying on this new 
form of education. Illinois has thought much upon this question, and 
there are many who believe that separate schools, under separate con- 
trol are essential to the successful promotion of vocational education. 
It seems quite clear that there are certain large gains to come from 
separation. Here is a new job in education. It requires new courses of 
study, different courses of instruction, different ways of handling the 
business. If we could start on a new basis without tradition and with- 
out machinery and deal with the situation as a business man would 
deal with it, and create a new system to fit the new conditions, with- 
out trying to fit it to traditional machinery, we should have conditions 
for the most rapid progress. 

But as secretary of the National Society for the Promotion of In- 
dustrial Education, I had to face this issue about five years ago. One 
night I sat in my noisy room in New York City, high above the hurly 
burly of the traffic, and I said to myself: I have been in every state 
in this Union, and I am convinced of one thing. The American people 
have confidence in the public school system and public school adminis- - 
tration and they are going to give the public schools of this country a 
chance to deal with this problem. So the place of constructive service 
on the part of the National Society has been to take the position that 
the thing to do was to accept as inevitable the idea that the American 
people do not want two systems of education within the same state, 
and, in consequence, to fashion our policies to work with the public 
school men of the country—to endeavor to bring about such a system 
of oraganization within the public schools as will leave this movement 
free to develop itself for a period of years. Somehow we must get 


145 


into a unit many of the gains which would come with separate control. 

This might mean a standing committee within the board with 
larger powers than any standing committee has had, largely freed 
from the hundred other things which the Board of Education must | 
deal with—a committee unhampered by tradition, with nothing else to 
do, but to deal with the question of vocational education. In some way 
we must get a group of people on the job of developing vocational edu- 
cation who believe in it, who have nothing else officially to do, who 
have been thrown into the lime light as officials whose business it is to 
get that job done—and hence who have to make good at it. 

My final point, Mr. Chairman is this. There are, it seems to me 
two steps in the direction in which this Society must move. One of 
them, I firmly believe, is to promote the industrial efficiency of the 
common man. We must teach mechanism and the theory lying back 
of mechanism. But in our vocational schools we cannot stop with this. 
We must make people who are capable of independent thinking. We 
must make intelligent, efficient citizens. We must implant the idea of 
loyalty and a larger service to our country—and that therein lies the 
future of America. 


146 


WOMEN IN INDUSTRY 
ABBEY MARLATT 


Professor of Household Economics, University of Wiconsin 


It is dangerous to speak three times in one place. This is my 
third appearance. I feel very much like saying that instead of nailing 
the pelt to the barndoor, this is a case of being scalped and tied to the 
door. 

I was told I would be put on the program whether I accepted or 
not. I was keenly reminded, when the last speaker was talking, of an 
old political story—al]l of you may have heard it. The ranchman saw 
his son disappearing over the horizon, holding onto the tail of the calf, 
and he shouted to him, “John, John, why don’t you let go?”’ And John 
called back, ‘‘Father, I can’t. It’s all I can do to hold on.” 

I feel a little bit like a carpenter friend of mine whom I knew 
when I used to teach in the city of Providence quite a number of years 
ago. There was something wrong with the school system. The teachers 
didn’t decide that, it was the parents’ association. (Laughter). So we 
held a meeting, ard to be throughly democratic, we had a representa- 
tive from every union. The representative of the carpenters’ union 
slowly unjointed himself—he was very tall, and as he rose said, ‘‘Well, 
before I started to talk on this subject. I thought I kenw so little about 
it I would go to headquarters and so I asked my small daughter what 
she thought could be done to improve the schools of Providence. She 
thought a while and then she said, ‘I think our recesses might be 
longer.’ | 

“Now,” he says, “‘you see it depends upon the point of view;” and 
that point of view has remained in my memory ever since whenever I 
hear a speaker on the subject of the present school system and the pro- 
posed system, either dual or not. 

Last night, you know, we heard of the dual education of the wo- 
man. It aroused just as much resentment as the dual control of this 
proposed vocational education. I feel that what we need perhaps most 
of all in any discussion of education, regardless of whether it is for 
woman in industry or man in industry, is to get down to fundamental 
facts as to what will make success. We can succeed only when we 
know the point that we are driving at. If we know what we are going 
to do, we can persuade almost anybody in sight that we are the one 


147 


person who can do it. We need to teach absolute faith that we will 
succeed. 

I think our school system fills us with doubt and we are teaching 
doubt as to our ability to succeed, and I believe that in any form of 
vocational or other education, the fundamental thing to teach is faith 
that we can do it. | 

When in the talks that come about through the effort of students 
to determine what shall be their future career, I always feel like say- 
ing to the student who comes to me to talk over the situation, “Find 
out what you want to do above everything else and then bend every 
effort toward it and you will make good. If you wait for me to suggest 
to you what may be your particular bent,it is at best a guess.” 

I believe that we need to leave the child with initiative enough so 
that it does not come saying “What shall I do next?” The reason that _ 
I felt so strongly last night in that discussion was that we were told 
we would be trained for juvenile trades and then for the trade of a 
period a little later, beyond the sweet sixteen period, and then for 
the period of home making that ought to come at twenty-five. Some 
of us miss it—therefore why take the training? (Laughter). And 
then later, presumably we would be trained to fill that last niche—what 
was it? (Laughter.) 

What we need to be trained in, is to take initiative, and I don’t 
know where that training is going to come best except as it begins 
from the time the child is allowed to take the initiative in the home 
and try it out; that is where vocational education begins. It is a 
question of training the will and training the judgment, and if in our 
vocational education we can do that best with the one-control system, 
then I think we ought to have it, regardless of what my own state 
may have adopted. Wisconsin tries out everything and then the rest 
of you profit by it. (Applause). It sometimes is a little bit hard on 
us, but I am also reminded that we have the fun of the game at least, 
and even if we do fail, as we often do, we at least have fought a good 
fight and that is something. 

And in this vocational education, whatever system is used, I 
would like to emphasize that woman and man together have made 
good in over four hundred forms of vocation, but there is one that 
man has never entered into and the Lord will have to change the 
whole system before he can, and fn this vocational education, whatever. 
may be the other forms of training that we give, we ought not to for- 
get that in the bringing up of the child woman is in control for at 
least six years, and no matter how successful she may be in other oc- 
cupations—and this present war has demonstrated that under the 


148 


stress and strain of emotion, she can do anything and succeed. She 
should be trained how to teach the young. In this it.is not a question 
of one sex. It is a question of teaching to control the will, so that the 
individual can make good wherever he or she may be placed. (Ap- 


plause.) 


149 


THE OUTLOOK FOR VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 
LEGISLATION IN ILLINOIS 
DAVID SHANAHAN 
Speaker House of Representatives 

Mr. Chairman and Ladies and Gentlemen of the Convention: 

Iam sure that Iam ata loss to know why I should appear bfore an 
educational convention to attempt to make a speech. One making a 
speech is, first, always fearful of appearing before an audience of 
school children and next, an audience of school teachers and college 
professors. 

I assure you I know but very litle about educational matters and 
less about vocational matters. As your chairman said, I remember a 
number of delegations coming to Springfield two years ago on this 
subject. I remember the clashes between the various committees; 
committees from the Board of Education in the City of Chicago, com- 
mittees from boards of education from various parts of the state of 
Illinois, committees from various so-called reform organizations and 
so-called commercial organizations. 

I said to these various committees that I doubted if any vocational 
education bill could pass the general assembly where there was such a 
conflict of views, and especially where there was a conflict of views 
between these various committees and the State Superintendent of 
Public Instruction. And I will state now that I doubt if any vocational 
education bill can pass the Illinois General Assembly that has not the 
hearty approval of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction. I. 
do not mean by that that the State Sueprintendent of Public Instruc- 
tion knows all about vocational education but he is the official, elected 
representative of the people in that position and he should have the 
last say in behalf of the people as to the kind and character of a bill 
that ought to be placed on the statute books of the State of Illinois. 
(Applause). 

I tried to arrange with these various conflicting elements two 
years ago, to see if they could not come to a compromise on some sort 
of a bill, but I found that the personal element had been injected from 
too many quarters. One coming from Chicago has got to be very 
guarded in what he or she might say regarding educational matters. 
For we have a very varied kind of a Board of Education, not the pres- 
ent board so much more than other boards, but it just seems that our 


150 


boards of education here in the city of Chicago must get themselves 
into the position of always being in the lime light, and one would think 
they are more interested in themselves than they are in the schoo! 
children of the city of Chicago, (Applause), to such an extent that 
these so-called reform and commercial organizations and other organi- 
zations of the city are always proposing some changes in the method 
of selecting the board of education. 


In the first place, our Board of Education is too large and un- 
weildy ; and in the second place, there has entered into the election of 
city, nationality of the city and religion of the city. Things that 
never should have entered into the selection of members of the Board 
of Education. 


We ought to have a small board of education selected because of 
their qualifications and their interest in the schools and the school 
children of the city of Chicago. There is no question but that we 
should have a vocational education law in the State of Illinois. The 
kind of a law that we should have I will not attempt to talk about, be- 
cause:I know very little about vocational matters; but I do know that 
some change ought to be made in the character of study in the lower 
grades of the grammar school departments. The boy and the girl who 
can afford to go through the grammar school and is unable to attend 
the high school or the college, ought to be better fitted to start out 
into business or the commercial world. 

Some change ought to be made in the character of study so that 
when our boys and girls, at the age of fourteen or fifteen or sixteen, 
are turned out into the world and cannot afford to continue on in school 
they should be better able to take up the problems of life. 


Regarding vocational education, I would say to you people in Illin- 
ois who are interested in having a law enacted, that you get these con- . 
flicting elements together, that you get these reperesentatives of these 
organizations who are advocating it, the representatives of the boards 
of education of the city of Chicago, and the representatives of the 
boards of education of the other large cities of the state, to fit in with 
the representatives of the rural schools and with the superintendents 
of public instruction, and draft a rational law that will be for the 
benefit not only of Chicago, not only of Peoria, not only of Springfield, 
but of every school district in the State of Illinois; and when you do 
that, when you get a compromise bill that is for the best interests of 
all, you will have no difficuity in having it passed by the general as- 
sembly, but if these conflicting elements continue to wrangle and quar- 
rel, there is not time enough during the session of the general assem- 


151 


bly for the:‘members to attempt to arrange these quarrels and work 
out a compromise bill among themselves. 3 

And I say to you now, those who are especially interested, that 
you go to work now before any bills are introduced along that line, and 
see if you can’t get a compromise bill that will meet the approval of 
all these elements. Then you will have some chance to have your bill 
passed, and I know that all the members of the general assembly will 
do everything possible to aid you. 

I had the pleasure of appointing as chairman of the educational 
committee, an educator of many years’ standing, now a farmer, a man 
who has served in the general assembly for a number of years and who 
had the approval and endorsement of the educational associations of 
the State of Illinois—Mr. Norman Flagg; and I know you will receive 
fair treatment at his hands, and as far as the speaker is concerned, he 


will aid you in every way possible in placing upon the statute books, — 


laws that will be of benefit to the school children of Illinois and to the 
citizens of the State. . 
Mr. Chairman I thank you for this opportunity to come before you. 


152 


fee REA TION OF BOYS AND GIRDS? CLUB WORK 
LO VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 


O. H. BENSON 
In Charge of Boys’ and Girls’ Wark U. S. Department of Agriculture 


Club work recognizes the importance of offering manly and wo- 
manly jobs to boys and girls and of making them demonstrators of 
achievement and good practice worthy of the best efforts of men and 
women of the community. Patronizing and assigning “kid jobs” to 
boys and girls never trains, much less appeals to, the aspiring spirits 
of youth. : 

Our best boys’ and girls’ extension leaders work with boys and 
girls, not for them or over them. Through club group work, boys and 
girls are given definite instruction and direction, instead of supervis- 
ion and policing. Very few boys and girls need policing if given oppor- 
tunities for the constructive direction they deserve. 

It is just as important to set standards of achievement with activ- 
ities of the farm, home and shop, as it is to give academic grades or 
set school standards of their achievement in studies at school. 

Through club groups and their local leaders, members are given 
training for local leadership and are developed as co-operative units 
for the community. This type of extension education offers motive for 
achievement, for individual effort as well as for team work of the club 
group. Both are essential, the one cannot thrive properly without the 
other. Club extension work is staged by means of contests, related 
plays, ownership opportunities, head-and-heart interest in work that 
proposes the pulling of “stingers” out of toil and transforming drud- 
gery into interesting work and oftentimes by this method work be- 
comes play. : 

Club work teaches and directs boys and girls in home projects 
through group or co-operative reinforcement, and thereby trains in 
matters of thrift, cultivates economy, and through net profits on in- 
vestment, proper values are better understood by the members. 

The proper use and saving of a dollar must be preceded by the 
earning of the dollar. Boys and girls in this type of education are 
taught to earn, not to beg, nor sell tags, and that asking something for 
nothing is ignoble. Club project work on a profit-making basis is a 
manly job and educates young people to invest their best talent in 
constructive and productive work, and to appreciate more fully the op- 


153 


portunities of the farm and the home. Agriculture and home-making 
to club members become fundamental reasons for the necessity of a 
broader education. 

Club work teaches that production must always precede consump- 
tion, and that by-products may become net profits to those who learn 
how to conserve them properly. Club projects teach business methods 
and management of farm-home enterprises and that every enterprise 
must contribute to the sum total of the efficiency of the unit—the 
farmstead and the community. 

Club work is a definite back-to-the-home education which recog- 
nizes the duties of leadership to the home first.. Schools and teachers 
belong to the home of the community. It is important that the school 
co-operate with the home more than that the home should deliver itself 
to the school. 

Boys’ and girls’ club work, as carried on by our most efficient 
leaders, seeks to develop within the club group the co-operative quali- 
ties that make for the much coveted community ; that is, the members 
of the club working for the group and for the benefit of the whole 
community, as much, if not more than, for the individual. 

An important extension principle involved in club work is that ex- 
tension leaders enter the home by way of the back-yard and the back- 
door, and that the child be permitted to become the official guide to the 
kitchen, the heart of the home. Once in the kitchen, it is quite possible 
for an extension leader to serve most efficiently the interests of the 
entire family. They are not refused co-operation, deceived, or re- 
strained from doing efficient work because of entrance via the front- 
door, with its parlor etiquette, with its deceit, superficialities, and 
powder trimmings. 

Club work should be not ruled by the forcing of formal school or 
academic credit upon it. The fact that it is now an elective home 
project, a program by a club membership outside and apart from the 
regular course of study in the school, is what gives it the freedom and 
genuine attractiveness for boys and girls. When once recognized in 
the particular course of study of our public schools, and without 
paid leadership for summer vacation periods, the boys and girls will 
quickly lose their present keen interest in the work and feel that it is 
an imposition to make them work at school duties during their entire 
vacation time. There are other ways for the schools and teachers to 
recognize and more properly encourage the work. Achievement mer- 
its, badges, medals, may be given by school officials, and achievement 
day programs held every year in early fall, not only serve to give rec- 
ognition to those who have achieved and set notable standards of ex- 


154 


cellence, but the club group and its work becomes in this way an effec- 
tual extension arm of the public school, a more potent factor for good 
to the school work, than if subjected to the usual academic measure- 
ments. Educators are not interested so much in what the club will do 
for them and the school plant, nearly so much as they are interested in 
making the club work a medium through which home and the com- 
munity strength is developed, an opportunity also, for the immediate 
translation of class room English, Mathematics, Physiology, Home 
Economics, and Agriculture into forms and terms of daily life, and in 
this way it will take the school to the homes and in turn will give the 
homes up to a more wholesome co-operation and reinforcement of the 
school. 

I am glad that we are not teaching schools any more, that we are 
teaching and leading communities. We are not teaching text-books 
nor subject-matter, but boys and girls. 

Homes were builded, children added, before the schools were 
necessary. It then became necessary to have schools, not because it 
was necessary to send the home to school but because it was necessary 
to have a common distributing point of community efficiency. The 
school is not essentially the social or community center but the distri- 
buting center of the community efficiency. 

Of course, school houses should be open every day in the Reale in- 
cluding Sunday, if necessary, not only for public school formal work, 
but for any other community interests, but we believe that it is just 
as important for the clubs, group meetings, associations, etc., to trans- 
fer the center often and meet around in the community, at the 
churches, the grange halls, or other convenient places, thus shifting 
occasionally for the good of the community this distributing center, 
that this may result in a better appreciation of the community needs. 
A procedure of this kind is always bound to reinforce and strengthen 
more definitely the public school, in its course of development, very 
much more than if a selfish academic program was to center every- 
thing within the four walls of the school to the exclusion of the home 
and other conveniences. 

There is no greater need in America today than a thrifty home- 
ward-bound education. We invite you to a serious and thoughtful 
study of the boys’ and girls’ club work as one of the efficient factors 
for this homeward-bound education. It is now a definite and perma- 
nent educational force backed by permanent appropriations by both 
Federal and State law-making bodies. It is, as a noted writer put it, 
‘an all American movement with an education philosophy distinctly | 
American as well as modern.” 


155 


BOYS’ AND GIRLS’ CLUB WORK— WHAT IS IT? 
—COMMON SENSE, 


QO. H. BENSON 
U. S. Department of Agriculture 


A farmer boy works ten hours a day, plows and cultivates the 
earth, feels no sense of ownership, has neither heart nor head interest 
in his work—That’s drudgery. 

A farmer boy gets up early in the morning, works all day, has no 
partnership with father, no chance of recreation, is denied club fellow- 
ship, has no ownership in crops and animals, such as, corn, baby 
beeves, pigs, or poultry—That’s tough. 

A club member takes a few grains of seed, manages them through | 
soil, environment, insect and plant diseases, and produces vegetables, 
not profits that win the prize at the club festival or the State Fair— 
That’s skill. 

A club leader writes a few pages of instruction on worthless pieces 
of paper, puts them into the hands of a club boy, and thus guides him 
to a business profit of $50 in a single season—That’s a good invest- 
ment. 

A club member may take an idle piece of soil, invest it with thirty 
cents worth of seed, a dollar’s worth of fertilizer, and a few hours of 
brain and brawn, and make a net profit of $150—That’s capital born 
of achievement. 

Fathers and mothers maintain active membership in lodges, clubs, ~ 
associations, societies, guilds, smokers, and unions, but fail to see the 
need of encouraging club work for boys and girls—That’s unfair. 

To give boys and girls manly and womanly jobs, membership in a 
club of their own, a feeling of ownership, an opportunity to do things, 
a real motive for study and achievement, a feeling of liability ; in short, 
a co-operative interest in the whole business of home making and 
farming—That’s common sense. 


156 


COMMERCIAL EDUCATION 
LEVERETI- LYON 
Assitant in Organization, College of Commerce and Administration 
University of Chicago 

Mr. Chairman, and members of the Convention: 

Yes, when the strong arm of the law laid its hand on Dean Mar- 
shall and restrained him from coming here, he called me up and asked 
me if I would come down and take his place, I told him I would come 
down and occupy the place he was supposed to occupy, but so far as 
giving you the message he could give you, it would be a very poor 
substitute that I could make. I knew, however, that any disappoint- 
ment that I might feel being here in his place would be small as com- 
pared with the disappointment that you would feel in finding me here 
in his place. I thought that the feeling you would have was something 
akin to that of the little girl that a grade school teacher of mine tells 
about, who, when she was first told she was going to go to school the 
coming fall, was very much pleased and very enthusiastic. She told 
all of her friends that she was just going to start to school next month, 
and every one that she told it to told her how nice that would be, and 
said, “Well, you are going to start to school, and I suppose you will 
learn your A B C’s.”” And she mentioned it to some one else, and they 
would mention much the same thing, until the A B C’s had come to 
be with her a sacred fetish. The first morning after she got to school, 
after the teacher had arranged the pupils in the way which she wanted 
them placed, she said: “And now we are going to begin with studying 
the A B C’s.” And the little girl was all alight with enthusiasm and 
anticipation. 

The teacher took a piece of chalk and put on the board a very 
ordinary looking “A”. “Now children,” she said, “That is “A”. The 
little girl looked attentively at it, looked at it again in a crestfallen 
way, and then breathed out loud: “My God, is that A?’ And so, I 
think your feelings in finding me here instead of Dean Marshall must 
be somewhat akin to hers. At any rate, I know you are much more 
interested in hearing his notions on commercial education than you 
are mine, and for that reason I shall take the liberty to read, so far as 
I can, from things that he has said or written along this line. It hap- 
pens that at the meeting of the Western Economic Society one or two 
months ago, at the University of Chicago, he prepared a paper on 


157 


somewhat the same topic, and I think the first page or two of that 
gives the suggestion of the basis on which he would place all com- 
mercial education. And I am now reading alias the first paragraph 
or two of that paper: - 

“Clearly defined reasoned curricula of business training cannot be 
evolved until some standard of valuation, and not necessarily the same 
standard under varying conditions has been set up. It is well enough 
to say that a business man should have a knowledge of statistics or 
accounting or of law, or of any other subject, and a case may be pre- 
sumably made out for all of the subjects but if a curriculum is to be 
drawn up, and certain courses are to be designated as required, and — 
others as elective, and if this training is to be completed within a given 
time, it is clear that the question, how much time shall be given statis- 
tics, how much to law, how much to accounting,as compared with other 
subjects, becomes a pressing question. And it is equally clear that the 
answer must be determined on the basis of relative value. Some 
standard of valuation must give us answers to such questions as these 
that follow. What, if any, are the absolutely basic things which should 
be included in a busines training? And why are these things to be re- 
garded as basic? The second question is this: Granted that the basic 
training had been scheduled, what if any, are the more important 
pieces of collateral training and how may we determine the impor- 
tance to ascribe to each? And, third, assuming that only a given 
period of time is available for the training of our business men or 
business managers, how shall we apportion this time among these basic 
and collateral subjects.’ Those three questions he puts as basic to 
consideration of any problem in commerical education. 

“There are, of course,” writes Dean Marshall, “many methods 
which may be used in arriving at any standard of values. The follow- 
ing is one method: To try to secure a generalized statement of the 
tasks or functions of the business manager. If this function is suscep- 
tible of analysis in somewhat definite parts, the organization of the 
curriculum is well under way. What the business manager does, is 
what we must prepare him to do, and a clear analytic knowldege of his 
operations can hardly fail to suggest the lines of training which will © 
enable him to operate efficiently ; even more, it will throw much light 
on the relative importance of various elements of that training.” 

Iam turning to a further paragraph in this same paper, and adapt- 
ing it somewhat to the particular circumstances: 

“The problem of the business manager, or the business man is in 
a sense at least, made up of four over-lapping, interacting determines 
—possibly these might be called variables. In the first place, the busi- 


158 


ness manager is concerned with what we might call technical matters. 
Let me elaborate on what I know he implies by that term: The modern 
business manager has much to do with technical considerations. The 
development of such sciences as physics, chemistry, physiology, geo- 
logy has made available for practical application a great store of tech- 
nical knowledge. The industrial revolution, the latest and the current 
chapter in the intervention of capitalism, has placed upon business 
management the responsibility for the conduct of the proceeds of pro- 
duction on a large scale—group labor operated with machine industry. 
It is no longer humanly possible for the business manager to konw all 
the technique of all the processes of production under his supervision, 
but inasmuch as most businesses are concerned so largely with techni- 
cal consideration, it is necessary that he shall have at least an intelli- 
gent understanding of the technical consideration of his business.’’ 
} Now, of course, as I know he means to imply in this paragraph, no 
one can be equipped for busines training, and for business manager-- 
ship without at least enough technical knowledge to give him a reason- 
able understanding of the technical processes that must go on in rela- 
tion to that business. Here is an illustration that he has used in this 
paper, and one which I know he thinks illustrates a situation admir- 
ably. . 

“Suppose,” he says, “that the trustee of some great endowment 
fund should go to a business man with this proposal: ‘“‘We intend now 
to free you of everything excepting consideration. We are going to 
supply the money, take any grade of land, any grades of labor, any of 
the present forms of capital goods—take any or all of them, any quan- 
tity that you choose, and with this money, this land, this capital, this 
labor, work out the best and most efficient combination; that is, there 
is, a technical problem for you; the arrangement in which those can 
best be placed relative to each other to get results. That problem con- 
fronting the business man is in itself a staggering problem, even 
though the busines manager, the production manager, if this were a 
manufacturing business, could summon to his aid the fruits of genera- 
tions of development in mechanical engineering. Similar problems to 
this have their bases in technical consideration other than those of 
mechanics and will occur to any one. Every manufacturing business 
finds technical problems among the largest of their problems. There 
is probably no business that is entirely free from them. But now 
every business manager finds himself confronted with another variable 
besides these technical problems which makes the problems before 
him tremendously more difficult. No trustee of a great endowment 
fund comes to him and says, ‘take lands, labor, capital in any form that 


159 


you like.’ He is confronted at every turn by the matter of value and 
price. Instead of choosing freely what he wants, he must determine 
his selection on the basis of what he can get at the prices he can pay. 
His whole problem is, through and through, shot with the question of 
value and price. At the price which he can pay, what is the best grade 
of land, the best quality of labor he can secure? Still further compli- 
cating this business man’s problem, this technical problem which is 
already greatly complicated by the matter of value and prices is a 
fourth variable, and one which is too often left out in giving considera- 
tion to business problems. That is the question of social environment. 
“The modern business man’”—I am reading now from Dean Marshall’s 
paper, “Is not conducting his business up in thin air; nor is he located 
on a desolate island. He is in the midst of organized society, and his 
operations are subject, more than he is likely to realize, in our individ- 
ualistic regime, to what we may call social control. Perhaps an illus- . 
tration will make a little more clear what is involved in this term, and 
how it affects the business man. Suppose that the production manager 
of a plant should come to a general manager with this proposition: He 
would say, ‘I have worked out a scheme whereby we can double our 
output, and more than double our profits. There will only be necessary 
one change in our present scheme of organization. That will be the em- 
ployment of child labor.’ Profits, of course, are the thing for which a 
modern business manager is working under our capitalistic pecuniary 
society. Does it follow then, that he will follow the suggestion of the 
production manager and install this new method with child labor? It 
is perfectly obvious, of course, that he will not, because the laws of the 
State forbid the employment of that kind of labor. Or, suppose the 
change that was suggested was the operation of all employes for six- 
teen or eighteen hours a day? Does it follow that the business mana- 
ger will conduct his business on that basis, even though his profits will 
be doubled or trebled? Obviously he will not, if the laws of his state © 
or his country forbid his doing so. In other words, he is hedged about 
in all of his operations by social control. The social control that I 
have just illustrated is what we have termed commonly, formal control, 
of which law is the best example. But that is only the beginning of 
the forms of social control which hedge about the business manage- 
ment, and make problems difficult and complex. Change the illustra- 
tion: He finds his advertising manager suggests to him that his 
profits can be doubled, and his output increased tremendously if he 
will utilize a certain form of advertising. Now, does it follow at all 
that the general manager will adopt this advertising and sales policy 
that has been suggested? There is one thing at least that will forbid 


160 


it, if it happens that this policy is contrary to the code of ethics of the 
Associated Advertising Clubs of America, and this man is a mem- 
ber or interested in following the dictates of that organization. He 
finds that here is a kind of informal social control that will forbid his 
taking that action—custom is a form of social control. The ethics of 
the business club to which he belongs, the dictates of what is good 
form, and what is not good form, of the particular social set in which 
he may happen to travel, are forms of social control, informal, but 
none the less binding than the formal law and other types which are 
instantly recognized. This is another type of social control which is 
worth more care, perhaps, than the other two. No business man can 
transact business alone—that is, it is necessary that he shall use the 
type of banking that facilitates, the type of financing organizations 
that he can find in his community. The extent of his activities and 
their character is entirely limited by the kind of commercial organiza- 
tion which he has to market his goods. If it is good, he is benefitted. 
If it is poor he suffers. In financing his business the same problem 
confronts him. And in dozens of other ways that one might point out, 
he is limited by the social environment in which he finds himself. It is 
obvious, then that the adequate training for business cannot leave out 
of its curriculum some information. some knowledge that will enable 
the business manager to deal intelligently with these factors of social 
control which so largely limits and conditions his activities. There is 
one other variable in the problem that confronts the business man. 
That is the variable of constant change. Whatever the technical pro- 
cesses may be, under which his business is operated, whatever the 
value in price may be that are conditioning his activities, and what- 
ever the social control that is limiting his actions may be, these do not 
remain fixed. They are subject to constant change, and the penalty for 
not being cognizant of that change, the penalty which is meted out to 
the business man, is—failure. 

As Mr. Marshall says in one paragraph in this paper, “Woe to-the 
business manager whose training gives him a conception of business 
problems as static.” 

It is possible, then, in a general way at least, to analyze the prob- 
lems of a business manager, or the business man in the two types of 
problems: Those which we might call internal problems, and those 
which we might call the external problems of business management. 
The external problems are of course, speaking largely, of two kinds, the 
problems of technique, that is, the processing that is going on within 
his plant or factory or organization of any kind that he has, and the 
other internal problems, the problems of internal management, the re- 


161 


lation of his various processes to each other. In social environment 
which surrounds it, and remember that social environment means 
formal, such as law, informal such as custom, ethics of business 
clubs, and also the commercial organizations with which he must deal 
if his business is to progress... The problem, then, narrows to some- 
thing like this: Commerical education must include at least training 
which will fit the busines man to deal with these internal problems of 
business management in their various aspects, and to give him an in- 
telligent appreciation of the external problems of business manage-. 
ment in their various and commercial aspects. The question then 
arises, can a training to fit for that situation be given? Perhaps the 
best answer to that is found in this: Business, at least in the present 
type, business for profit as it is carried on now, is a comparatively new 
thing. In Anglo-Saxon civilization it is only four or five hundred years 
old. And ever since business has been carried on for profit there has _ 
been a training, both in the internal and external problems of business 
management. For the very large part of our history of modern busi- 
ness that training has been carried on through the system of what is 
known as apprenticeship. To go back to the type of the craft guilds is 
all that is needed to see that this is true. One ordinarily thinks of the 
system of apprenticeship under the guild system as a training very 
largely in the technique of business, but training of the guilds under 
the system of apprenticeship was very much more than that. One or-. 
dinarily thinks of reading the old indentures which read something like 
this: “The aforesaid John Gibbs and Agnes, his wife, agree to take the 
aforesaid Thomas Gott and train him, teach him in the performance of 
their craft of fishing as well as they may do. Signed by the aforesaid 
John and Agnes Gibbs.” That is, to train him in the merely technical 
end of that business, but training in apprenticeship was something 
vastly bigger than that appears, if we consider for a moment what the 
guild really was. It was much more than a school. The guild did not 
train people to fit them into the technique of some business, and then 
turn them out to find a livelihood wherever they might. The guild 
trained these people essentially for one thing—to make them business 
managers. When they were through with this technical training they 
were accepted as masters of this craft. That is, they became business 
managers, and as masters of their craft they were engaged not only in 
the technique of that craft, but in the buying and selling process as 
well. In this training of apprenticeship, as all of you are undoubtedly 
aware, the master craftsman in whose charge the apprentice was 
placed, had full control over his apprentice. He brought him up in all 
the traditions of the craft, and the traditions of the craft were much 


162 


wider than merely the technical knowledge of that craft. That is, we 
find that the craft was, among other things, a religious organization 
and the moral training of the apprentice was carefully looked after. 
The craft in addition to that, was in many cities a political organiza- 
tion, and in all cases it was a political organiztion to a great extent, so 
that the training of the apprentice as a citizen was carefully looked 
after. But in these external problems of business management, what 
was the treatment of the apprentice? Why, we find that the craft 
regulated all of the problems, at least many of the problems which we 
now find in different form is being handled by social control. That is, 
the craft fixed the size and quality of the goods which were produced. 
Now of course where that is done at all, we usually leave it to one or 
two forces, either competition, to bring about good production, or else 
to law.- A pure food law was not necessary under the craft regime, be- 
cause the craft passed resolutions concerning that, and it is a simple 
matter to find in the old records of the early English towns rules to the 
effect that if the aforesaid craftsman should put too few threads in a 
layer of cloth he was subjected to severe penalties, to be paid not to the 
government, not to the state which was passing the legislation to re- 
quire him to make his goods up to date, but to the guild itself. In 
other words, the guild was an organization which set down specific 
regulations for the benefit of the customer, which regulated the size, 
_ the quality of the goods that might be produced and sold under a cer- 
tain name and grade, regulated the price at which the work might be 
given, regulated the relationship between one guild to another, in other 
words, attempted to carry out the warning in these external problems 
which we now find in quite a different form. But of course, although 
the apprenticeship training was adequate for external as well as inter- 
nal problems, under a simple form of industry and commerce, that 
simple form of industry and commerce was not to last forever. There 
came what we commonly think of as the beginning of the modern era, 
the coming of printing, the invention of gunpowder, the renaissance, 
the Reformation, the geographic discoveries, all of which culminated 
in that industrial commotion that is commonly called the industrial 
revolution. And growing out of that came a vast change in the condi- 
tions of business, and although in their essential name of external and 
internal problems, there was a change, the name of these problems 
changed very decidely, and as a result, apprenticeship broke down as a 
method of training, so that the question which now really confronts 
any interested in commercial education is this: Can we, under our 
present system of large scale, complex industry, find a substitute for 
the old apprentice system which shall train in external as well as in- 


163 


¥ 


ternal problems confronting the business manager. | 

I have here a few pages of a letter which was written to me by 
Dean Marshall at one time, and from which I can take certain cuttings, 
and with some adaptations and amplifications, give what I think is an 
answer to that particular question. Perhaps I am misusing the term 
“letter,’—it is somewhat of a more or less official communication at 
the university. 

“But if the apprenticeship system was doomed what was to take 
its place? We do not yet know in detail the answer to this question. 
We are in a period of transition, such perhaps as the world has never 
seen before. Industrial processes, commercial methods, social relation- 
ships, are frequently revolutionized in astonishingly short periods of 
time. As was to be expected under these circumstances, there was and 
still is a period of more or less blind experimentation with reference to 
business training, and in this exeprimentation certain experiments .. 


-frquently secured undue significance through the process of imitation. 


The development that has occurred has been conditioned in large part © 
by the balance and interaction of forces at work in the business and 
scientific realms. These two things have constantly played upon each 
other in the business education that we have. The industrial revolution 
has brought about a tremendous increase in production capacity and 
business enterprise. Great as was this increase, however, the market 
expanded at even a greater rate, so that for, say, a century the pres- 
sure upon the busines world was upon production rather than adminis- 
tration and distribution. : 
Although this was true for the first half of the century following 
the industrial revolution, that is, that the market out-ran production, 
and the question before business men was this—how. shall we get 
goods produced fast enough? The latter part of the nineteenth cen- 
tury was to see the situation reversed. And although the matter is” 
referred to a little later, that is what is now bringing the stress on 
commercial education. Following the industrial revolution the market 
was wide, and productive processes, although under the influence of 
science rapidly gaining in strength, were still inadequate to supply 
the market. The latter part of the century the situation has been re- 
versed and now we are finding interest centering more and more in 
commercial education, marketing processes, distribution processes, in- 
surance, all of the things that are engaged in marketing goods. - The 
methods of training for business grew out of and kept pace with this 
changing emphasis of business problems, the developments in the 
exact sciences, and the changing views with respect to social relation- 
ships. Fora long time there was little or no conscious deliberate train- 


164 


ing and preparation for administering the external problems of busi- 
ness management and rapidly developing resources. Let me say that 
again—For a long time following this sudden change in the methods 
of doing business after the industrial revolution, or, rather, in the 
early part of the industrial revolution, (since we are still in the in- 
dustrial revolution) for a long time there was little or no conscious de- 
liberate training for administering the external problems of business 
management; that is, these matters of relationship to other people. 
Rapidly developing resources urged by an expanding market to even 
more rapid development, drew attention to the internal problems of 
management and our prevailing attitude of laisser faire, let people 
alone, individualistic outlook, was not calculated to set up any counter 
attractions in relation to these external problems. It was by accident 
rather than design, as a matter of fact, that the basic material in 
training for these external problems began to receive some attention — 
in private and public schools, under the guise of courses in government. | 
You will remember that it was about the time that the Declaration of 
Independence was drawn up and the Constitution of the United States 
followed a little later. People’s minds were interested in government, 
and under the guise of courses in government in this early period of 
industrial revolution, law, government, political economy and later, 
sociology and social psychology, began to be taught in the schools, and 
it is to these subjects, originally put in for courses of government, 
that the schools of commerce are beginning to look fortheir material for 
courses in the external problems of business management. It remains, 
then, for our generation in working in business education, to mold this 
material into form better fitted to the use that we have in mind. That 
is, its adaptation to business problems. And so we see already that 
schools of commerce are beginning to announce social problems ot 
business. And other schools are beginning to make requirements in 
psychology, government and ethics. But while these external prob- 
lems of business management were being postponed or at least dealt 
with only indirectly, training for these internal problems was given 
very definite ‘attention. The increasing scale of operations brought 
about by the machine regime of industry quickly drew attention to 
matters connected with the technique of administration, with the re- 
sult that along in the ’30’s and ’40’s there was started the movement 
that we commonly think of as the technique of business administra- 
tion, that is, those courses in penmanship and accounting, definite 
training in that type of office management which was later copied by 
the public schools. Of course at first it was begun privately because a 
few private individuals saw the possibilities of making money in that 


165 


sort of thing; later copied by the public schools; and even today under 
considerably changed conditions it makes up the backbone, at least, of 
secondary training for business in all except the distinctively progres- 
sive high schools. We have seen that problems of production were also 
pressing in the century following the industrial revolution. Training 
for this aspect, that is, the production processes, took a little different 
turn. Because of the relationship of such problems to the material 
long developed in the physical sciences and rapidly being developed in 
the biological sciences, this phase of the work was taken over by 
schools of technology, and as a result we saw springing up all over the 
country schools of mining, agriculture and engineering. That is, 
schools whose real problem was dealing with a big phase of the busi- 
ness man’s internal problems of management. And in these private 
business colleges and later in the high schools, we found, of course, 
courses starting dealing with another phase of internal problems, 
what we might call facilitating course, facilitating administration. 
Even in these technical schools, schools of mining, engineering and ag- 
riculture, there began slowly to be an appreciation of the fact that fun- 
damentally they were dealing with business problems, and as a result of 
that we find that later some of them began to put in courses of political 
economy, even courses of accounting and statistics and course dealing . 
with the outstanding structures of our industrial organism, and in 
some cases they went so far as to require a fifth year of work, in 
which this type of problem dealing with external problems of organ- 
ized administration could be taken. But as I said a few minutes ago, 
in the second half of the nineteenth century, these internal problems 
of production, still of great importance, began to yield to problems of 
distribution. The emphasis of that particular point was borne upon 
me very strongly once by talking with a wholesale hardware man. He 
said “the only reason that I am not very rich is because I was born 
just ten years too late.” J asked him if he would explain how that had 
anything to do with his financial situation. “Yes,” he said. “I have 
forgotten the number of years ago, but a number of years ago, I went 
to work for one of the largest hardware houses of St. Louis. I really 
got there in time to go very fast, but if I had been there ten years 
earlier I could not have failed to have been a very important factor in 
that organization. Not because I was a man of any particular ability, 
I have average ability, and nothing more, but the market of the West 
was so gigantic at that time that this particular distributor could not 
find men enough to take administrative positions. Our one job, as he 
put it, was to get the goods. The market—there was nothing to that. 
Anybody, he said, who could smoke stale cigars and tell an unsavory 


166 


story,and wear a red tie could go out and sell goods. Those were the 
days of the old commercial salesman, the old drummer. ‘But,’ he said, 
“that thing has changed. Now we find that our problem is not alone 
getting the goods, it is finding the market.”’ And so, as we have said 
here, in the second half of the nineteenth century, the problem of pro- 
duction, while still of great importance, began to yield tothe problems 
of distribution. A corresponding problem occurred in training. Exist- 
ing organizations began to add courses.in advertising, salesmanship, 
and now a new institution has sprung up—the College of Commerce, 
retaining naturally the old courses dealing with administration tech- 
nique, but retaining courses concerned with distribution and utilizing 
courses in political economy, government and law which gives some 
appreciation although as yet a very poor one, of the structure of indus- 
trial society. The situation in 1916, then, is curiously mixed. The trade 
school, corporation school, the continuation school, are providing train- 
ing in technique. The private commercial college and the corporation 
school and secondary school are providing training in administrative 
technique, and a few of these institutions in their curricula, courses 
dealing with problems of marketing, problems of production and prob- 
lems conected with the external problems of business management. 
As yet there are few courses dealing with production, and preparation 
for external problems has seldom gone very far. That is, even in 
_ schools of commerce, there is still an inclination to give the old courses 
in government, in law, that were designed not essentially for business 
men, or for people who were training for business, but were designed 
essentially as training in government administration. The school of 
technology, and some corporation schools are giving particular atten- 
tion to the problems of production. Of course that is well taken-care 
of in our schools of technology and engineering. Of these the most 
progressive are under the influence of scientific management, and are 
organizing and borrowing courses of administration, and usually with- 
out really seeing the implication of their action, are making use of 
material which has to do with an understanding of their social envir- 
onment. The collegiate schools of commerce, or whatever they may 
be called, have in the main fallen under the influence of political econ- 
omy, I suspect because political economy, although developed to train 
people for governmental work, has some business about it. Classical 
political econmoy, with its natural orderof philosophy of social relation- 
ship, with its attitude of taking theories, based on eighteenth century 
facts, is the touch-stone of twentieth century administration. . These 
_ collegiate schools of business training have seldom a curriculum based 
on any comprehensive philosophy of the problems they are attacking. 


167 


There is, has been and has to be a policy of opportunism. They have 
borrowed, they have utilized, they have compromised. Their chief - 
merit has been that their presence is a recognition of a real and very 
big problem. And by force of circumstances, they have more or less 
unwittingly given material useful for administering the external prob- 
lems of business management. The great hope in their present situa- 
tion is that they give unmistakeable indications of an intention to deal 
with the problems as a whole and in a coherent fashion. 


168 


TRAINING TEACHERS FOR VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS 
L. D. HARVEY 


President Stout Institute, Menomonie, Wisconsin 


Taken in a broad sense the vocational school is one which under- 
takes to give people special preparation for successful practice of an 
occupation, a business, a trade or a profession. In this sense the medi- 
cal school, the theological school, the law school, the school of com- 
merce, the normal school and the trade school are all vocational schools, 
I take it that it was not the purpose of the committee in assigning me 
this topic that I should attempt to cover the entire field, but that the 
discussion should be limited to the consideration of the training of 
teachers for vocational schools organized to prepare people for efficien- 
cy in industrial occupations. The field is still broad when thus limited, 
because of the possible variety in purpose and the scope of the voca- 
tional school in the indusrial field. Success in any industry demands 
the mastery of four distinct types of knowledge, and skill in the appli- 
cation of each of these types in the development of the industry. They 
are: 

First, a knowledge of the conditions affecting the industry—such 
as extent and permanency of the demand for the product, availability 
of the raw matrial on a competitive basis, transportation facilities, 
dependence of the industry upon the stage of development of scientific 
knowledge, and the extent of that knowledge available, the character 
and extent of available labor supply immediate and prospective, char- » 
acter and extent of probable competition; if the industry involves the 
production of a patented article or the use of patented machinery, the 
rights of the concern under the patent laws. This does not exhaust 
the list but it is sufficient to indicate the character of the knowledge 
of conditions upon which the success of an industry depends. 

Second, a knowledge of what is essential for successful organiza- 
tion of the various activities demanded by the industry. This involves 
the proper selection and arrangement of machinery for the greatest 
economy in operation, the handling of raw material, the development 
of an effective office force, the establishment of a proper selling agency, 
the routing of work through the shop in the process of manufacture, 
the provision for adequate supervision through foreman, superintend- 
ents, assistant superintendents, etc., and the providing of such other 


169 


factors as may be necessary to secure the greatest paar oe in the 
use of material, machinery and labor. 

Third, a knowledge of what is essential in the proper administra- 
tion of the organization. 

Fourth, a knowledge of industrial processes in the use of machin- 
ery and tools, and skill in applying this knowledge in transforming the 
raw material into the finished product. The larger the industry, the 
more largely are the various activities growing out of these four types 
of knowledge differentiated. In such an industry, by far the larger 
number of people employed will be concerned directly with the indus- 
trial processes and will have little or no responsibility for initiative in 
any of the other three types of knowledge and corresponding activities. 
A much smaller number of men will be concerned directly with the ad- 
ministrative side and a still smaller number with the knowledge essen- 
tial for the organization and understanding of conditions under which 
the industry may be made successful. To go to the other extreme, 
where the single individual is the producer ; he needs to have a mastery 
of each of these types of knowledge and of the activities growing out 
of them. The problems of organization and administration in such a 
case are reduced to a minimum. With the growth of the industry 
these problems become steadily more complex, and the necessity for 
men trained as organizers and as administrators becomes greater. 

From this analysis of the elements for success in an industrial en- 
terprise it becomes evident that there is a necessity for a definite class 
of vocational schools or at least for a definite type of training to fit 
men as organizers and as administrators. The wrecks of industrial 
enterprises as shown by the records of bankruptcy courts, in which 
failure may be traced to a lack of knowledge of the conditions affect- 
ing the industry and of proper organization and administration, indi- 
cates very clearly the necessity for vocational schools that shall under- 
take to train men as industrial leaders. The failure of other enter- 
prises through lack of efficient and conscientious workmen, indicates 
the necessity for vocational schools to develop a higher type of work- 
man dealing with industrial processes. 

In this country the discussion for the needs of industrial education, 
both for the industry and for the individual, has been confined almost 
exclusively to the necessity for improvement in the process worker. 
This is but natural because of the large number of these workers and 
because in the development of the industries in this country, in the 
great majority of cases the organizer, the administrator, has started as 
a process worker and by reason of native ability, ambition and oppor- 
tunity, has reached the more responsible position. The time is coming 


170 


when we shall realize the possibility of developing this type in greater 
numbers and to a higher degree of efficiency through definite, well 
organized instruction and training for this particular type of effort. 
At present, however, the necessity for reaching the great number of 
those who enter the industries as process workers is becoming so ap- 
parent that for some time it is probable that educational effort in this 
field will be largely confined to the development of ways and means to 
make the rank and file of industrial workers more efficient as workmen, 
not primarily for the benefit of the industry, but for the benefit of the 
individual as a man and as a citizen, the benefit to the industry result- 
ing as a consequence of bettering the conditions of the individual. if 
these conclusions are correct it seems desirable to still further limit the 
scope of my paper to the consideration of the training of teachers for 
that particular type of vocational school which undertakes to prepare 
people to work more effectively in shop or factory. In this class of 
vocational schools involving the use of the hand, the teaching should 
be of three types: 

First, that teaching which results in motor efficiency in a partic- 
ular vocation; second, that teaching which results in the mastery of 
collateral knowledge relating to the necessary motor efficency and 
- which enables the learner to understand the when and why of partic- 
ular motor processes; third, that teaching which results in the neces- 
sary knowledge, awakens and strengthens impulses and desires, creates 
ideals essential for good workmanship, good citizenship, self preserva- 
tion and improvement. The type of vocational schools just suggested 
has to deal with two distinct classes of people, first those now employed 
in the industries but who are not yet skilled workmen; second, those 
too young to begin a regular apprenticeship in an industry but who 
have decided upon a vocation for which they wish to prepare. In this 
class there may be some who have found employment in unskilled labor 
or low grade jobs leading to nothing better, and temporary in char- 
acter. 

Vocational schools may therefore be either continuation schools 
for the individual who has gone to work in an industry either as an ap- 
prentice or a helper, or in unskilled and temporary employment, in 
which school instruction is limited to from four to eight hours per 
week; or the schools may be all day schools in which instruction is 
given for six to eight hours daily. This limiting the vocational school 
to those who have already entered upon their vocation and to those 
who have selected it but have not entered upon it is an arbitrary classi- 
fication and perhaps not well founded. 

We have a type of schools called pre-vocational, in which the idea 


LTT 


is to introduce the pupil to a variety of hand work, not primarily for 
the purpose of developing general skill in any particular vocation but. 
for the purpose of developing general skill of hand and a certain in- 
dustrial sense, which means the power to think in terms of materials, 
tools, processes, means and ends, which gives him an opportunity to 
make an intelligent choice of a vocation with reference to his ability 
and aptitudes. Asa result of his work in this prevocational school he 
may decide to choose as a vocation one of the lines of work in which he 
has been given instruction and while we have called it prevocational 
schooling up to the time the choice is made, it is evident that what 
instruction he has had in that particular line, has been for all practical 
purposes, education for a vocation which he has finally chosen. Had 
he decided upon his vocation before taking any prevocational work 
and had entered a vocational school for the purpose of getting the 
necessary instruction, he would have had practically the same instruc- 
tion and training that he should have had in this particular line in a 
prevocational school and the kind of teaching at that stage would be 
the same. 

I have indicated three lines of teaching as essential in the vocation- 
al schools. These three lines of teaching are distinct in character and 
content and therefore it may be possible to have three distinct types of — 
teachers, each a master of one of these fields, and involving some ac- 
quaintance with each of the other fields. If the school is small, with 
but a single teacher, he should be prepared to give instruction in each 
of the three lines, but in the large city where the school is larger 
with many classes and teachers, it is possible to differentiate the work 
so that different types of teachers may be employed with better results 
than would follow if it were expected that each teacher should give the 
three types of instruction. The vocational teacher who has to give the 
type of instruction resulting in skill of hand in a particular vocation 
must be master of the processes employed in that particular vocation 
and which he has to teach. This means that a teacher of a trade pro- 
cess must be master of that process but it does not mean that in order 
to teach that successfully he must be master of every other process 
known to the trade. If this were so it would be extremely difficult to 
find skilled workmen, masters of every process of their trade in suffi- 
cient numbers to give the very limited range of instruction likely to be 
offered for some time in vocational schools. He needs to know that all 
skill of hand is based upon right forms and order of mental activity 
and he needs to know what these forms are and what their proper 
order is, and he ought to present his material in such manner as to in- 
voke the proper form of mental activity and its correlated form of 


172 


motor activity. He needs to know that he is not simply a workman in- 
_ terested in production of inanimate objects for the market, but that 
he is an artist and his art consists in so playing upon the sensibilities 
of his pupils as to develop in them the power to produce a given pro-' 
duct in perfect form with the greatest economy of time and effort. 
The plumber who can wipe a joint successfully has one element for the 
teacher of plumbing, that is, the knowledge of a process. If he isa 
joint wiper he may be prepared for his job but if he is teacher of joint 
wiping, he is not prepared for his job unles he understands the art of 
teaching. He must know by what process knowledge is developed in 
the mind of the learner and how to so present his instructional matter 
as to bring into action these necessary mental processes. He must be 
able to analyze the process into the various essential steps and must 
realize the best possible order of these steps, and know how to present 
in the best possible form each distinct step in such a way as to develop 
in the pupil’s mind a clear knowledge of the how of that step, with the 
resultant expression of that knowldge through the work of the hand. 
He must understand that his pupils come to him in different stages of 
preparation and with different capabilities, aptitudes, and tempera- 
ment and he must know how to reach each individual most effectively. 
This means a study of the human being, and takes the teacher into a 
field entirely different from that he occupies as a skilled workman in 
the industries. Without these qualifications the pupil learns from him 
in only one way, through imitation, and his mode of presenting it may 
be such as to make imitation very difficult because the greater his skill, 
the less appreciation he is likely to have of the ability of the learner to — 
assimilate through imitation that which he has acquired through 
years of practice. He must understand the principles of school mana- 
gement as applied to the handling of classes, and groups in a class, and 
of individuals. In this type of instruction the amount of strictly class 
work is very limited. The instruction must be given in the class room 
or shop. There is little or no opportunity for study or advancement 
outside of the instructional period. The capabilities of pupils vary 
greatly and accordingly the rate of progress of the different individuals 
in the school varies, with the result that even though at the beginning, 
the instruction may be designed for the class as a whole, it very soon 
develops that it must become instruction adapted to single groups, or 
still more likely to individuals. The effective handling of classes of pu- 
pils under these conditions requires a high degree of professional skill 
as a teacher and manager, the type of ability not necessarily accom- 
panying in any degree the ability of a skilled workman. 

The manufacturer is very insistent that no man is competent to 


173 


teach in any vocational school who is not a master of the processes he 
teaches, and he is entirely correct in this view of the situation. The in- 
telligent school man is just as insistent that the teacher should know 
the art of teaching as well as the subject he teaches, and he is entirely 
right in his position. 

Because a man learns a trade in a shop or in a number of shops in 
the course of a number of years, it does not follow that this is the only 
way or the best way to learn a trade. Improvement in shop processes 
has been brought about because there have been some men who have 
not been satisfied that the existing process was the best possible, and 
as a result of their thought and experiment new and better processes 
have been developed. The same thing applies to the learning of a vo- 
cation. Improvement in learning is the result of thought applied to 
processes and one of the results of that thinking is that some men are 
coming to see that a shop organized for successful commercial produc- 
tion is not organized for the purpose of teaching men processes, and 
therefore is not likely to exemplify the best methods of teaching these 
processes. It is one thing to produce for the markets successfully 
made products, and it is another and quite different thing to produce 
for the industries skilled workmen. It follows therefore that the 
teacher of trade processes in a vocational school, in addition to a 
thorough knowledge of the processes he is to teach, must have profes- 
sional training to fit him for his vocation as a teacher. It is true that 
there are people who seem to have intuitively the kind of knowledge, 
mental attitude, and insight which renders them effective as teachers 
without very much special training but they, like angel’s visits, are few 
and far between. The great mass of successful teachers in any line is 
made up of those who have studied the art of teaching. Many of them 
have learned it as the apprentice learns his trade, little by little, in an 
unorganized, unrelated way, but which may through long experience 
and practice, result in a reasonable degree of efficiency. They have ac-. 
quired what mastery they have of this vocation through costly ex- 
periment upon those with whom they have had to deal. It is because 
these facts have been recognized that normal schools and the depart- 
ments of education in universities and colleges have come into exis- 
tence in all parts of the country. They are vocational schools for pre- 
paring people for the vocation of teaching; and for the industrial vo- 
cational school, there is the same necessity for thoroughly trained and 
successful teachers as in any other school. In fact, the limited time 
pupils are in attendance at these schools and conditions under which 
they attend, and the necessity for prompt results, all combine to make 


174 


the necessity for thoroughly trained teachers in such schools even 
greater than in any other. 

One who knows the history of edncntional development knows 
very well that whenever a new type of school springs into existence 
to meet a new demand in education, it finds the effort handicapped by 
the lack of teachers adequately trained for the new line of work, and a 
beginning must be made with such teaching force as is available, but 
progress depends upon the rapidity with which skilled teachers for 
that line of work are developed. Men and women will not prepare 
themselves for a line of work not already in demand and which does | 
not offer a reasonable financial return. That situation is emphatically 
true today in the attempt to organize vocational schools. We shall 
hasten their development if we create a demand for an adequately pre- 
pared teaching force. We shall hamper its development if we insist 
that anybody can teach:in these schools provided he is a skilled work- 
man in an industry. As I have said in the beginning, we must do the 
best we can for the teaching of processes; in the absence of thoroughly 
trained people we must take the best shop men we can find, best not 
simply as workmen, but best from the standpoint not only of workmen, 
but of intelligence and of comprehension of the work to be undertaken, 
of ability, of experience, of sympathy with those with whom they have 
to deal, possessing patience with the shortcomings of the beginner, 
We should undertake to inspire this class of workmen, put into the role 
of teachers, with the ambition to study the problems of the teacher 
from the professional standpoint. We should organize schools for the 
professional instruction of this type of teachers—a continuation school 
for them. Some benefit will accrue from such efforts. In many cases 
little value wil be apparent. The professional teacher of these teachers 
must realize that in the main he is dealing with people who have had 
no systematic education beyond the elementary school, who have not 
been accustomed to dealing with professional ideas or ideals, whose 
thinking has been limited rather narrowly to their particular line of 
work, and therefore their instruction must be of the simplest nature, 
_as concrete as possible, and given by people who are themselves sym- 
pathetic and who have a broad understanding of the limitations under 
which these student teachers must work. We must recognize that if 
we are to develop a system of vocational schools so that it shall meet 
the needs of the people of this country we must ultimately have as 
teachers in them men and women with broad sympathies and a broad 
education both technical and professional. The sooner we come to ac- 
cept the German view point which it has taken that country fifty years 
to develop, that a vocational teacher must have at least a high school 


175 


/ 


education to begin with, and three years of technical and professional 
training to fit him as a vocational teacher, supplemented by actual ex- 
perience in a trade, the sooner we shall put vocational education on a 
basis to commend itself to our best judgement and the judgment of the 
laborer and the employer. We may not be ready at this moment for 
so advanced a step as this but if we believe in vocational education 
sufficiently to pay for it, we can very soon demand at least two years 
of technical and professional training supplemented by shop work, and 
provision already exists for furnishing that kind of training. The 
added time that may be necessary as the system develops will be ac- 
cepted as a matter of course. Still another kind of preparation may be 
employed which will furnish us a limited number of good teachers. I 
mean that type which will offer to men and women of superior type of 
mind now employed as workers in the industries, an inducement to_ 
give up their work and enter a school offering professional instruc- 
tion, and technical and general instruction supplementary to their 
trade work, so that they may acquire a knowledge of the art of teach- 
ing which they can utilize in teaching the trades of which they are 
masters. The state can very well afford to assist such men in getting 
this kind of training. In either of these types of schools or the one 
mentioned earlier, there should be the kind of instruction that will fit — 
those being trained for each and all of the three types of teaching I 
have mentioned, and from this class of people thus trained we should 
be able to secure men and women capable of organizing a vocational 
school system of a city and administering it well. 

There should be formulated and organized for instructional pur- 
poses the body of knowledge required for the second and third kinds of 
teaching I have suggested as essential in the vocational schools. This 
body of knowledge is not now in form for instructional purposes except 
to a limited extent. When it is thus put in form, academic teachers 
employed now in regular public school systems may through specially 
organized classes receive training which will enable them to give that 
work intelligently and successfully. It should be offered in schools 
training teachers for city systems of schools so that those in training 
may have the opportunity to prepare themselves for this additional 
line of work. 

The problem of the vocational school in the large city is somewhat 
different from that in the small city. In the latter case, the limited 
number of people seeking instruction in a given vocation will make the 
problem to secure adequately trained teachers a more difficult one than 
in the large city. The offering of courses of instruction in Normal 
Schools to prepare for the second and third kinds of teaching I have 


176 


suggested will do much to remedy this situation in the small city. 
Most of the teachers, even in the small city today, have at least a 
Normal School training and when there comes to be recognized the de- 
mand for this new kind of teaching, teachers will be prepared for it. 
The first type of teaching, that of the industrial process, will be more 
difficult to handle. In many cases, the best that can be done will be to 
take someone from the trades in the community, while in other cases 
the teacher of manual training who has had the right kind of prepara- 
tion may be utilized for certain lines of vocational work. When it is 
recognized that there is a demand for this kind of preparation on the 
part of the manual training teacher and that it will carry with it ade- 
quate compensation, young men will seek such training and training 
schools will provide it. One other solution of the trade instruction in 
vocational schools in the small city lies in the employment of skilled 
traveling teachers who may serve the vocational schools of a number of 
cities, dividing the expense among them. The program I have outlined 
for providing adequately trained teachers for the vocational schools 
is not one that can be put into effect all at once in its entirety, but it 
seems to me it is one that we should look forward to, and not too far 
forward. If we believe in vocational training, we should believe that 
it is worth while. We should recognize that it will cost money and we 
should undertake to educate the public to realize that whatever it 
costs, if properly organized, it will pay large returns on the invest- 
-ment. We should not stand for makeshifts and sham work, but have 
the very best attainable. We should realize and make the public real- 
ize that this is a scheme for supplementing our educational system. 
That in the past our efforts have been to develop a system which 
beyond the elementary school has been adapted to the needs of the few 
and that no matter how well it has served that purpose, the great 
problem yet remains to give the proper kind of education to at least 
seventy-five per cent of our population. We must understand and 
make educational men and the public generally understand that the 
promotion of industrial education does not mean letting down of stand- 
ards in any other educational field of effort, that it does not mean the 
lessening of support for existing institutions, but that it does mean 
adding to our expenditures for educational purposes, because of an ef- 
fort to extend educational advantages to all the peole and not simply 
to a small majority. That it means better men, better citizens, better 
- living conditions, better workmen, better homes, better citizens, better 
appreciation of what education means, and more united and hearty 
support for every phase of education. 


TE 


FARM LIFE AS EDUCATION 


HERBERT QUICK 
Federal Farm Loan Bureau, Washington, D. C. 


Ladies and Gentlemen: 

The educational value of farm life has in the past been pretty well 
recognized. A great deal has been said about it and it is sometimes 
astonishing to me that so much of human excellence, so much of 
human achievement and so much of everything which goes to make up 
our national greatness should have been ascribed in the past to farm 
life and no effort of any consequence be made to make more of it or to 
see whether or not there are not educational possibilities in it of which 
we have not hitherto taken advantage. It is after all not an accident 
that at the time when this nation stood highest in comparison with 
other nations, relatively I mean, and not absolutely, highest in every- 
thing which related to invention, discovery and progress, that the per- 
centage of our people who were born and reared upon farms was the 
largest in the civilized world. We all know.the reasons why farm life 
in itself constitutes a larger part and a valuable part of education. 

It is a pity that some educations are confined to it instead of being 
developed further. The farm boy is at an early age put under circum- 
stances which tend to develop character. So is the farm girl. The 
farm family is in itself an education up to a certain point. The boy 
who takes part in farm work, as all farm boys must, by and large, is 
at a very early age brought into contact with the natural world in the 
most interesting manner. His contact is that of a part owner of the 
farm. Ata very early age he begins to be charged with responsibility 
with reference to it, and I think that there is nothing in the world 
which fits men for responsibility more than to have boys and girls 
charged with responsibility so long as those responsibilities are not 
erushing and daunting. The boy who goes forth with a team is re- 
sponsible for a valuable piece of property in the team and the machin- 
ery to which the team is hitched. It is perfectly easy for him to des- 
troy a harrow or to injure a plow. In addition to that, he is charged 
with the responsibility of thecrop itself. He is taught that the accur- 
ate dropping of the corn in the row, making an accurate check, will be 
reflected in a larger yield of corn and easier method of culture all along 
and that next year’s proper care of the family depends to a certain 
extent upon the way in which he discharges this day’s duty. The girl 


178 


is obliged to study the animal husbandry involved in the taking care of 
fowls and calves and colts. She learns the veterinary science of the 
farm. She knows how to heal the diseases of the baby things placed 
in her care. Moreover she is given charge over her young brothers and 
sisters to am extent which is scarcely a prevalent thing in the city 
family. The oncoming of the season, the ‘portents of the sky, the: 
question as to whether or not tomorrow will be a fine day, the problem 
as to whether or not we will lose the crop by cutting it today or whether 
we had better postpone it until another time, the coming of the frost 
early in the fall, winter lingering in the lap of spring, the crop of nuts 
in the forest and its influence upon the supply of pork for the winter— 
a thousand things, charming, interesting, expanding, educating, filled 
with responsibility, these things crowd upon the farm boy and the 
farm girl and they fill the conversation of the fireside. They lighten 
up under a proper knowledge and understanding of their significance in 
the prosy converse of the family circle. They make, in an intelligent 
farm family, they make every evening and every meal a part of the 
educational progress of the family. I need not dwell on this. All of 
you who have been brought up in farm homes filled with intelligent 
people know that in no other part of your life was there such a leading 
forth of the qualities of the human being as is to found in farm life. 
All this took place always. It came down from the time when life was 
always a part of education and education always a part of life. It is of 
one piece with that period when the savage boy shot at a mark with 
bow and arrow and passed imperceptibly from a boy at play into a war- 
rior at war or a hunter bringing home the food for the family. And it 
is for the sake of bringing to your minds with some degree of vivid- 
ness perhaps more than it has had in the past that I am here today to 
talk of farm life, not as a proper subject for vocational training in the 
ordinary sense—I am not speaking about training for a vocation here, 
I am speaking of education in and by means of a vocation. I am not 
talking about agricultural education. I wish to speak to you of educa- 
tional agriculture. This, I think, is the key note to the welfare of the 
nation in so far as the nation’s welfare is connetced with the proper 
maintenance and the proper development of farm life and the solution 
of the problems of keeping the people of the country upon the farms, in 
so far as it is desirable to keep them there, and of placing the country 
minded people of the cities back upon the farms in so far as it is de- 
sirable to place them there. The education which has been found in 
farm life in the past, however, in the main has been actual. That has 
been inherent. It is an education which could scarcely be evaded upon 
the farm. Perhaps that is the reason why is was so successful. We 


179 


seem to have been, over a good part of the past, very successful in 
evading the educational advantages of everything in our lives, in so far 
as they could be evaded. No effort on the part of our educators or our 
educational system could rob farm life of its educative effect, and yet 
I believe this to be true, that the present dominance of farm bred boys 
and girls in the industries and the development of our cities is almost 
at an end. I believe that the superior excellence of our city schools, 
that the development of our city educational systems, the development 
of vocational training in the cities, the lining up of our educational sys- 
tems, in cities and towns, with life, I believe that that has already 
wiped out the advantage that the farm boys and the farm girls in the 
past have enjoyed and that has turned the tide of progress against 
them and the processes are already in operation unless something is 
done to stop it to turn our farm people in a hundred years, in one hun- 
dred and fifty years, into a peasantry as dumb and dead and brutal as 
the peasantry of any foreign land. And yet, let us hope for better 
things. We all know that the education that is inherent in farm life 
has never been even touched upon in the past in any large way. The 
child goes forth into the field, he goes forth—the little toddling child 
goes forth into the yard on the farm. He is educated in animal hus- 
bandry by dropping the crumbs for the chickens or the pigs to pick up. — 
He goes into the field and he touches upon geography. He watches the 
clouds and he is instructed in meterorology. He finds out what is 
good to feed the pigs and he begins to study hygiene. He kills the 
chicken and dresses it for his mother and learns his lesson in anatomy — 
and in the processes of the animal life before him he studies physio- 
logy. And yet, when he goes to school he.finds a system of education 
as a rule which seems to have forgotten all about these things and by. 
a violent wrenching takes these topics up and teaches them from 
books, forgetting that the child has been in contact with them in one 
way or another all his life. A greater educational absurdity never ex- 
isted. If it were possible to imagine from the standpoint of a true 
and correct and logical system of rural education that such a system of 
education as ours could exist, I think the observer from the outside 
could say that while it might exist it never could exist except under 
the influence of insane people. And yet, in the main, it came in a very 
natural way. It came largely from such people as Horace Mann, who 
worshipped education merely as culture. It came through the feeling 
that girls must be reared to be the wives of presidents of the United 
States and boys to be their consorts. It grew out of the fact that peo- 
ple believed that anybody was good enough for manual labor and that 
every person should raise his boy and girl to be something better, by 


180 


which he meant something idler, than himself. ‘Now, I need not take 
much time to make my point with this audience and I hope I shall not 
do so. I believe that the rural school needs only three things, except 
farm life, to make it the best educational plant in the world. Those 
three things are reading and writing and arithmetic. Give the farm 
boys and the farm girls reading, writing and arithmetic and a proper 
educational organization, and I would rather have them without any 
school houses. I would rather have them without any other equipment 
than to have the finest educational buildings in the world—and I am 
for good educational buildings—and have the course of study which in 
nine cases out of ten is now used to paralyze the aspirations and the 
outgrowth of the boy or girl upon the farm. That bad copy of a poor 
city school which rules from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the 
Lakes to the Gulf; that little, contemptible, little red school, which we 
ought to change into a great big school house with something about it 
besides tradition and something more than buncomb back of its praise. 
(Applause). 

It is true that after a child has learned to read he ought to use 
that for the purpose of educational advancement. He needs to learn 
geography, but farm life is all geography in its basis. And the proper 
way to teach geography to the farm boy and the farm girl is to do it 
through the brooks and the fields and the soil and the rocks around 
him, and the political lines which govern first his father’s farm and 
second, the school district in which he lives and third, the counties and 
cities and leading out there from the state and United States. And if 
you mean commercial geography, I will take you to the class which is 
studying the economics of the crops of wheat. I will take the price of 
a bushel of wheat next year in a class of boys and girls in a Kansas 
country school. I will show you the teacher there giving them more 
geography because in order to know about wheat, the child must know 
about western Canada and Australia and Argentina and India and Tex- 
as and the wheat belt of the Ohio valley and the other western states. I 
will teach them current history because in order to know about the 
price of wheat, the boys and girls must know about the war. They 
must know about the stoppage of the Dardanelles. They must know 
what the Dardanelles means. They must know of the Dardanelles as 
the cross-way of the nations for four thousand years. They must 
know of the fact that crop after crop of wheat has been dammed up in 
Australia by this present war. They must know that Europe has been 
taking wheat from this country because it is the nearest pile of wheat 
to take from and that the wheatof Australia and Argentina and Russia 
has been damming up. They must consider the matter as to whether 


181 


this war is going to end in 1917, as to what wheat is going to be worth 
next year. You have geography, you have current history, you have 
ancient history, you have all history, in the price of wheat, the rearing 
of farm products, the type of machinery that is used. You have every 
element, almost every realm of human knowledge is laid under contri- 
bution by the things which are involved in the daily processes in the 
farm school. There is more bacteriology in the study of the soil and of 
the diseases of animals, things that the children ought to know in 
order to be good farmers, than there is in the average bacteriological 
laboratory of the ordinary technical school. There is more entomology 
in the life history of the insects which are at work upon the farms in 
Illinois today, or if not today, will be as soon as the weather breaks up 
in the spring, than most people ever learned. There is more nutri- 
tional knowledge in the figuring of balanced rations for the live stock 
upon the farm than the average person ever learned outside of a col- 
lege course. And when it comes to the use of mathematics, the reckon- 
ing of the subtraction of fertility from the soil in a crop of corn, the 
determination as to whether or not the particular line of agriculture 
pursued maintains that fertility or not, the determination as to 
whether a particular type of farming is more or less profitable than 
another type of farming, the thousand and one economic problems 
which are as yet unsolved by the agricultural economics of our country, 
are yet things which must be attacked and may be attacked intelligent- 
ly as related to particular farming operations in the counting room of 
the neighborhood, which the rural school should be. I need extend the 
application of these principles no further. 

In a certain part of New York City is a tall Balding with a flat roof 
on top of which has been placed a foot or two of soil. There the children 
of the city are taken for the purpose of allowing them to grow flowers, 
to come in contact with plants. What would the City of New York give 
for half of the square mile of land which surrounds every school house 
in the Mississippi Valley, if it could be placed about the school houses 
of New York? Almost any price would be paid for the educational 
plant to be found upon one half square mile of land, and yet about 
every rural school house the plant stretches out indefinitely to the hor- 
izon. And yet this plant is very largely thrown away. The child is 
broken loose at the age of five years with a terrific wrench from the 
natural processes of education in which his mind has been engaged and 
thrown upon the tender mercies of an educational system as dry as 
dust and dead as hay. No wonder that the people of the United States 
are fiocking to the cities. No wonder that there is nothing found in 
the country which is interesting and yet the really interesting things 


182 


of the world are in the country. Now I speak for farm life as educa- 
tion, I speak for the wonderful opportunities which the rural school 
presents for bringing forth a great people, a great and intelligent peo- 
ple, better in mathematics, better in geography, better in economics, 
better in history, better in an understanding of a dozen different 
branches of science than they can possibly be in city schools because 
they will handle the very things themselves. To be sure they may do 
that in city schools, but in the country they handle these things as 
being intimately related to their own lives and to the welfare of their 
own families. Now the educational principle does not stop with the 
farm. You know that as wellasIdo. The getting of education out of 
life is the problem of the future. I attack it from the standpoint of 
the rural school because there is where the problem is easiest. There 
is where the education in life lies upon the surface. There is where 
the child can’t go through life and be robbed of an education except by 
some artificial means. In the country is the place where if farming is 
properly studied and made the basis of education, once more the great 
inventor, the great scientist, the great poet, the great artist, and the 
great statesman will come because they will be brought up in the sys- 
tem of education which will lead out from them the best that is in 
them. 


183 


‘HOW CAN VOCATIONAL EFFICIENCY BE OBTAINED 
INV EER PUBEIC SCHOOLS ? 


WM. C. BAGLEY 


’ Director School of Education, University of Illinois 


Your executive committee has asked me to answer the question, 
How can vocational efficiency be obtained in the public schools? I un- 
derstood the chairman of the committee to suggest that I give my own 
views upon this matter. I am very glad to avail myself of this privil- 
ege, and to tell you what I think the public schools ought to do, and 
with competent leadership and a liberal financial support, easily could 
do to solve this important problem. 

In the first place, to start at the beginning, the pubhe school can, 
by improving the work which it is already doing, contribute much more 
than it has hitherto contributed to vocational efficiency. I refer to the 
basic work, the fundamental work, which constitutes the peculiar prov- 
vince of the elementary school. There are certain factors that are 


common to all vocations, and with these the common curriculum of — 


the elementary school is primarily concerned. Whatever the public 
school does to improve its product in the fundamental arts of social 
life—in reading, writing, speaking, computation, in habits of courtesy 
and respect for the rights of others and respect for the collective will 
of society as crystallized in law—whatever it does here will contribute 
directly to vocational efficiency in a thousand different occupations. 
Whatever the school does to develop ideals of accuracy, efficiency, ef- 
fortful achievement, persistence, and self-control will make for better 
workmanship in every art and craft and profession. If we analyze the © 
complaints and criticisms that have beeen aimed at the public schools, 
we find that many of the weaknesses to which they point can be recti- 
fied only by the stiffening of our somewhat anaemic philosophy of 
general education—which in itself is only one expression of the senti- 
mental philosophy of life which always tends to accompany an abound- 
ing material prosperity. We cannot expect large returns from an in- 
vestment in specific or vocational education if the agencies of voca- 
tional education must expend much of their time and energy in correct- 
ing defects and uprooting habits and reshaping twisted ideals that 
have resulted from flabby and dilletante general education. The 
fault here is not so much in the subject-matter of the school, as in the 
spirit of the times. The subject-matter has recently undergone and is 


184 


now undergoing extensive revisions—and they are important—but 
basic to the curriculum is the general attitude toward aggressive and 
persistent effort—the willingness to pay the price for mental growth 
and mental mastery. 

In the second place, and again upon the lower levels of education, 
the public schools can and should do much to insure upon the part of 
our boys and girls the intelligent selection of an occupation. Acquaint- 
anceship with the necessities and requirements, the rewards and limi- 
tations of the basic human occupations should be begun before the 
pupil has finished the elementary school. 

I am a little doubtful as to the definition of ‘‘prevocational work,” 
but as I interpret the term it means this, primarily. Its chief aim 
should be that of acquainting the pupil with the larger types of bread- 
winning occupations. Insofar as suitable equipment may be provided, 
this acquaintanceship should be gained through actual adjustment to 
actual situations. The boy should learn how it feels to do different 
kinds of work—the difficulties involved, the materials needed and how 
they are obtained, the tools required, and the processes that make up 
these fundamental arts and skills. This would’be in the nature of voca- 
tional guidance, for here native abilities might be discovered or native 
interests laid bare. It would also be in the nature of a liberalizing edu- 
cation, for it would furnish a basis for understanding how the work of 
the world is done, and for appreciating its difficulties and evaluating its 
service. Indeed, if proper educational conditions could be insured, it 
would be of great educational advantage to have the different indus- 
tries studied at first hand by groups of pupils, just as it is excellent 
educative experience for every boy to have a summer of farm work and 
a summer of office work and a summer in a factory and a Summer on 
the railroad and a summer in a printing office. 

But the amount of differentiation in this prevocational work will 
of necessity be small. This is not specialized vocational education in any 
sense of the term and ought not to be confused with vocational educa- 
tion as such. I personally believe that it should be required of all pupils 
whatever their occupational plans and ambitions may be. 

Of course any extensive use of the industries of a community as a 
laboratory for work of this type is far in the future and may never be 
realized. Ata very early date, however, it should be possible to realize 
in the elementary school some of the rich premises that have been 
made by the advocates of vocational guidance. Here is a movement, 
rich in possibilities—a movement which should do a great deal to cor- 
rect many of the evils of maladjustment now unjustly laid at the door 
of the curriculum. Particularly important is that phase of vocational 


185 


guidance known as vocational enlightenment. There is every reason 
for urging the careful investigation of occupations by competent and 
unprejudiced students, and the development of materials and methods 
of instruction which will give to our boys and girls the kind of know- 
ledge that will enable them to make an intelligent choice among the 
thousands of bread-winning callings. 

As investigation continues, it may also be possible to determine 
with reasonable accuracy the innate traits or handicaps that would 
make for or against success in various types of work. This, however, 
is not a problem for present solution. Only by the amassing of data 
such as are being collected in Cincinnati and perhaps in some other 
cities can the basis of a real science of vocational discovery be laid. 

From the age of fourteen on, the opportunity should be open for 
a certain measure of real vocational specialization; but every liberal- 
ized curriculum should still retain a generous requirement of liberaliz- 
ing and non-vocational work. The proportion of time that the strictly 
vocational work may properly consume during these early adolescent 
years is still a matter of dispute. Temporary and individual adjust- 
ments should be looked upon as legitimate so long as they are recog- 
nized as specific cases, and do not commit the school to the unqualified 
indorsement of early specialization as an educational policy—a policy 
which is perilous to true democracy. Thus the boys and girls who can- 
not be held in school by anything other than highly specialized work 
should be permitted to engage in such work in a proportion even as 
high as three-fourths of their entire program. But these will be the 
exceptions, and the policy of the school should be, I am convinced, to 
discourage programs so narrowly specific between the ages of fourteen 
and sixteen. From sixteen to eighteen, a larger proportion of the work 
may well be specific in aim for those pupils who will finish their school- 
ing with the close of the high school course; but even here a margin 
should be left for work that is distinctly liberalizing in its purpose, and 
again the policy of the school should be to encourage the broader and - 
more comprehensive programs. 

But there is no good reason, in my opinion, why such vocational 
work as is undertaken beginning at the age of fourteen should not be 
fairly thoroughly vocational in aim and methods. In other words, so 
long as the liberalizing elements are provided in the program, the vo- 
cational courses may well aim to develop specialized skill of a rather 
pronounced type. Indeed, Iam convinced that a specific training which 
does not emphasize pretty strongly the side of skill will be disappoint- - 
ing both to the learner and to those who later employ him in productive 
work. 


186 


We come here to a phase of the vocational education problem 
which is full of thorns. Dr. Dewey, for example, speaks strongly 
against the type of vocational education which has its purpose pointed 
toward a high grade of skill rather than the development of what he 
terms “initiative and personal resources of intelligence.” That a pro- 
gram of vocational education should aim for initiative and intelligence 
and adaptability as well as for skill, we should all agree. But I do not 
believe that the two aims are mutually exclusive of one another. It is 
the same question that has puzzled us before in our educational think- 
ing—the apparent antithesis of habit and initiative or judgment; and 
the only rational answer seems to be this: that a high measure of skill 
is not inconsistent with a high measure of initiative. The German 
educational system has often been criticized by Americans for its em- 
phasis of the habit-side and its neglect of the side of initiative. I recall 
hearing some ten years ago a ringing denunciation of the German 
ideal of thoroughness on the ground that it killed initiative and origin- 
ality. It is unsafe at the present writing to draw conclusions from 
recent events; but whatever may be our opinion as to the moral justi- 
fication of the Germans in their war against the world, the person who 
denies their originality and their initiative and their ability to meet 
new situations and to adapt their resources to immediate problems can 
hardly be familiar even with those military and naval achievements 
that have come to us through the fine-meshed sieve of the censors. 

It is at this point that I would personally part company with some 
of those who, like myself, have protested against the dual system and 
_ other unfortunate features of the radical vocationalists. I would go so 
far as to say that, whenever we start to vocationalize, we should voca- 
tionalize, we should not play at it. Let us not be afraid of developing 
skills to a high point of efficiency. Let us rather be certain that the 
skills that we do develop are basic skills that have wide range of appli- 
cation and a fair promise of longevity, and certainly let us see to it, 
first that a study of principals parallels the mastery of skill, and sec- 
ondly that no youth is required or permitted to spend al of his school 
time in this specific type of training. The time that he does spend, let 
him spend in getting a mastery of pracesses that will be of real service 
to him, rather than a dabbling in this or that with nothing carried far 
enough to make him really proficient. 

There is certainly large need here for a much more penetrating 
study of the skill elements underlying the various occupations than has 
' yet been attempted, and for organizing these elements into coherent 
and meaningful courses of study, the progressive mastery of which 
will spell an effective mastery of some basic industrial process. There 


187 


has been something aproaching this in the development of manual 
training, but the manual training work has been severely criticized 
because it has subordinated specific skill to general culture—usually 
through a naive rehabilitation of the doctrine of formal discipline in 
its most untenable form. In the progressive mastery of a fundamental 
art there should be much formal discipline in the true sense of the 
term. There should be a gradual abstraction of the factors that under- 
lie the acquisition of skill. The efficient teacher of shorthand or of 
sewing or of cabinet-making or of jewelry construction or 
of machine shop practice should be able to make his discipline carry 
much further than the confines of the classroom or shop or the details 
of his specific art. It should be an object lesson typifying the acquisi- 
tion of every complicated art—and it can be made this only if an art, 
or a basic phase of an art, is really mastered. 

This point of view is, I believe, of large importance in the con- 
struction of vocational curricula. The public school must not be led. 
into ineffective vocational work by the cry against mechanization and 
the fear of producing an automatism. The kind of mechanism and auto- 
matism that it needs to watch out for is the kind that is represented 
by the so-called automatic trades which can be mastered in a few days 
and which forever after keep the worker on the lowest plane of me- 
chanical routine. But skill and efficiency in the complicated arts do 
not come under this category. It would be hard to imagine a man who 
had too much skill in these activities. 

But there will be room, of course, for the kind of acquaintanceship 
with an art that comes merely from working through some of its 
adjustments without the intent to acquire proficiency. The prevoca- 
tional work that I referred to, and which I believe might be profitably 
introduced into the elementary schools, is distinctly of this type. On 
the higher levels, too, there is a place for some laboratory work in the 
shops that will not lead to a high measure of skill. A boy who is pre- 
paring for machine shop practice will need some acquaintance with 
woodwoorking and with foundry practice in order to have a basis 
for comprehending the work of pattern-making and the casting 
of the parts that he, as an expert machinist, is to finish and assemble. 
This acquaintanceship certainly does not involve the expert mastery of 
woodworking or of foundry work. But as an embryo machinist, his 
training in his chosen field should be specific, detailed, and aimed from 
the outset at accuracy. The boy looking forward to the printer’s art — 
' will need some acquaintanceship with machine work, but this again is 
preparatory to his really technical training. Every boy ought to have 
some experience in firing a boiler and running an engine; but, if he is 


188 


to become an expert fireman or an expert engineer, his training must 
be much more protracted, much more strenuous, and much more exact- 
ing. 

It would seem necessary, then, to distinguish between vocational 
courses that are preparatory value in giving the individual an inter- 
pretive basis for understanding certain relationships of the art that ° 
he seeks to master, and the courses that are specifically designed to 
impart technical skill and insight in that art. 

My contention is that anything approaching an effective discipline 
must be looked for in this rigid, accurate, exact mastery rather than in 
the informal acquaintanceship represented by the former activities. 
There is a very good reason for protesting against meremechanism and 
mere automatism; but there is also reason for recognizing that a 
high measure of technical skill is not inconsistent with a high measure 
of intelligent adaptability. Unless we recognize this, our vocational! 
work is likely to be just as disappointing in its failure directly to pre- 
pare for the bread-winning activities as was the older traditional curri- 
culum or the modifications that have gone under the name of manual 
training, and just as unsatisfactory as have been all attempts to min- 
imize accuracy and rapidity in the common arts of the elementary 
program on the ground that such training crushes initiative. 

In short, the problem is to recognize distinctly the type of outcome 
that is chiefly desired. General ideals of accuracy and clear thinking 
-cannot come out of specific discipline that nowhere reflect these vir- 
tues. . 

As a part of any comprehensive scheme for solving the problem of 
vocational education in the public schools we must have a permanent 
bureau that wil study the needs of the various vocations for trained 
recruits. The Cleveland Survey has shown the absurdity of conclud- 
ing that we can solve the educational problem merely by.adding wood- 
working and metal-working shops to our school equipment. It has 
shown that in the city of Cleveland today only one adult man in every 
ten is engaged in occupations for which the specific work of these 
shops will be a preparation. A thoroughgoing system of vocational 
education, as Ayres suggests, must study this problem on an acturial 
basis and work out tables of occupational probabilities that will form 
a basis for vocational guidance and insure that each of the basic oc- 
cupations demanding trained skill and insight will be neither over- 
crowded with, nor lacking in, an adequate supply of workers. 

And this leads to the most perplexing problem of vocational edu- 
cation and perhaps also the most perplexing problem of modern indus- 
trial life. 


189 


Let us imagine ourselves projected fifty years into the future when 
at least twelve years of schooling have become the universal require- 
ment, and secondary schools have developed specialized vocational 
courses giving to the vast majority of our boys and girls a practical ef- 
ficient mastery of some bread-winning art. Each person, let us assume 
is highly skilled. At the same time, machinery has developed in so 
efficient a form that much of the world’s work is done by automatic 
machines that require for their operation but a minimum of trained 
skill. Here, it would seem, we have two principles working pretty ef- 
fectively against one another. We propose to provide thorough edu- 
cation for intelligent and highly skilled efficiency in a social order that 
seems to be developing in quite the opposite direction, and to require in 
ever increasing degree the machine operative who can learn his process 
in a few days. Under a condition of this sort, a caste system is bound to 
develop (a situation which until recently has not been serious because 
of a large annual supply of cheap labor from other countries) unless a. 
new attitude toward the mechanical trades is brought about. 

There is only one way to solve the problem—and this way has 
been pointed out by those who have clearly grasped the difficulty. It 
involtes something more than a reconstruction of our educational sys- 
tem: it demands a reconstruction of the social system. Democracy 
can never come truly into its own until every person does his share of 
the world’s drudgery. Drudgery there will always be and the develop- 
ment of automatic machines is going to increase rather than diminish 
it, for drudgery is work that can be done with a minimum of intelli- 
gent direction. To set aside a certain class or group on the theory that 
they may best be utilized for this work, sparing the others for con- 
structive effort, is the essence of social stratification and the antithesis 
of democracy. It may be that certain people are better endowed by 
nature for the constructive work, and that social progress in the ab- 
stract is promoted more effectively when these individuals are per- 
mitted to do this work unhampered by lower forms of activity. It is 
true also that some individuals—a goodly number in fact—are more 
than content with the routine of drudgery, and are willing to let others 
think for them. Certainly one can lead a comfortable vegetative sort 
of life without an overexertion of one’s mental faculties, and certainly. 
thought-work is the most fatiguing and at some points the most agon- 
izing of all types of effort. But the true democracy will, I believe, in- 
sist upon a division of labor in each individual. The routine work will 
be done by all, and for relatively short periods; the constructive work 
will be attempted by all. It sounds fantastic and impracticable, but it 
seems to be the only type of program that will adequately meet the 
needs of a situation that is rapidly developing. 


190 


A DISCUSSION 
WM. BACHRACH 


Supervisor of Commerical Work in the High Schools of Chicago 


Ladies and Gentlemen: 

The program this afternoon would have been complete enough for 
an entire convention, it seems to me. It took up the matter of the 
contents and teaching of commerical education; the training of teach- 
ers, and farm life and how we can weld all of these phases into the 
work of our schols. Those of us who are trying to work out the prob- — 
lems, meet these difficulties every day. The great difficulty right now is 
that where we have these branches in our schools we have difficulty in 
getting teachers who can teach them properly. We have set certain 
-requirements—educational, professional—for these teachers, but we 
have great difficulty in obtaining them. Very few of our teachers 
whom we are compelled to take can see the subject which they are to 
teach from the broad standpoint that was given us here today. It 
seems to me that the one thing that we ought to set about doing, if we 
do nothing else during the coming years, is to work out some plan for 
preparing the teachers who come to us without any teaching prepara- 
tion whatsoever. Every semester, in our Chicago schools at least— 
and I suppose the same is true elsewhere—we put to work people who 
have had practical experience and a minimum educational requirement 
we put them in classrooms with pupils ready and eager to learn, and 
these people have not had a day’s experience in teaching. It is a very 
dangerous problem. It is a thing we wouldn’t dare do if we didn’t 
have to do it, if there was any other way out of it, and it seems to me 
that we have gone far enough in this work to seriously take up that 
particular phase. 

One other thing that I think we ought to encourage that was 
brought out this afternoon, is to place more real responsibility with the 
pupils. I know a great many teachers who are firm believers in home 
work. They believe that home work gives some responsibility, but in 
most cases the home work given is an absolute fraud. The boy and 
girl know it, and either do not do it or they do it in a very poor way. 
The solution in the city, it seems to me, is to get the boy or girl some 
real actual work—some work that he knows is real because he will be 
‘paid money for it. It is not so difficult to get that if we try and think. 


LoL 


If we do try and get that, we can discard our old-fashioned idea of 
home work. : 

It is a rather difficult matter for me frequently, to get the princi- 
pals to release boys and girls from school for half a day occasionally 
to do practical work, because it interferes with the regular school 


work. I believe that we will have to look at these things from a 


broader point of view. It is impossible to fool the youngster. We 
have done it for a number of years; we are doing it more or less now, 
and I believe that we ought to give him the real article, and give him 
some real responsibility. 

The one difficulty that we are having nowadays, and that perhaps 
was mentioned this afternoon, is that as soon as we reach a stage in 
our vocational teaching where we get a certain amount of skill from 
the pupil, we begin to fear that we are making them one-sided, and 
then we think we will take out from the course of study some of this 


skill-producing matter and put in some more of the so-called cultural 


matter and we defeat the end that we work hard to achieve. 


Just the other day a teacher came to me, much distressed—a_ 


teacher in the commercial department. She said the pupils are not 
allowed to choose enough in the courses—are not given enough oppor- 
tunities. She said that the pupil in the two-year commercial course 
should be allowed to take one year of a foreign language. I argued a 
long time with her, tried to show her that that had heen the bane of our 
past education, the giving of a smattering of a great many things, and 
She said she had taught just now in her third year. I could not begin 
to convince her. She knows more about education now than she ever 
will know again, I am sure, and she had started in as an inexperienced 
teacher three years ago. 

I believe that in the two-year course, and that is the course that 
most of our vocational schools have now, we can bring forth a great 
deal of skill, but it depends upon the. teacher who is teaching shorthand 
or shopwork to work into that teaching a broadening view, and it can 
be done. The shorthand teacher need not dictate letters which are 
deadening and trite. She can dictate material from literature that is 
really worth while. If she does this the pupil will get it in a better 
manner than he would in the literature class, I believe. The shorthand 
teacher in dictating, if she has anything of elocution, will give the 
pupil a real notion of that piece of literature. He will then write it. It 
will then be worked into a system that way. He will then read it back, 
and three times. then he has gone over that piece of literature, so that 
there need be little fear of this narrowing influence that our so-called 
academic friends feel exists in our vocational training. | 


192 THE LIBRARY OF THE 


FEB 10 {940 | 
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 


Axl 


n 


hi pees q nisip aa RS ae ; 
SNCS & 5 ue f “ ph ‘ 
f ae : ; 
eS RY mi Livpsat ie 


63 
hee 


